Sunday Company / Sunday ICU Visit

A warm and mostly sunny Sunday......... we had friends K & B and J & S over for lunch....... I started cooking two days ago but it was worth it because this morning was very easy. Everyone got here at noon and all I had to do was pop things in the oven and "dress the table" (as those designers on Oprah say). Wonderful conversation........ we sat down at 12:30 and didn't budge till 5:30. Except for me...... I was up and down because I served lunch in courses and it worked out very well.

Plus, it was so warm outside that the cats were able to stay on the screen-porch. As soon as K walked in the door and said hello to us, she went straight out on the porch to see AngelBoy. She has a definite understanding of my blue-eyed cat. And she is one of the few people that AngelBoy doesn't ignore.

We all decided that we're such a good group that we'll have to do this again. I'll have to think of a different menu. Today was crawfish bisque soup, tossed salad, baked cheese bread, Greek spinach pie, Italian meatballs. (I just had to do the meatballs again, since they were such a hit at the Valentine party). K & B brought a chocolate cake for dessert.

Everyone had just signed our guest book and was heading out the front door, and our phone rang. It was our friend F's son-in-law, calling from Ohio, to tell me that F was taken from her private hospital room and brought back to the ICU. So much for my "Wonder Woman" theory. My husband and I drove to the hospital. We were going to wait till tomorrow, but it sounded too serious to wait till morning.

F is now hooked up to all sorts of machines....... a tube going through her nose to feed her, a tube going down her throat to send air into her lungs. Poor F is so drugged up that she doesn't know what's going on. Her eyes are open but she isn't seeing a thing. Without that machine to force the air into her lungs, she wouldn't be breathing at all.

Come to think of it..... if a machine is pushing air into your lungs, you're not really breathing, are you?

On top of all of that, F now has pneumonia. How much can a body take?

Quality of life.... there is no 'quality' in F's life at the moment.

During lunch today, our friend J (a retired medical doctor) and our friend K (a retired biologist) talked about the medical profession and their success rate in hospitals. K said she "stays out of hospitals." J doesn't believe that keeping a patient alive for "six more weeks or months" is a success.

Now if these highly trained professionals don't have trust in the hospital system, where does that leave us?

And where does that leave our friend F? Not in a good place. I wonder how long F's children will allow the doctors to leave her hooked up to those machines.

F would be appalled at her current life. I can hear her now. "This is only living if you happen to be a rock." It was sad to see F in her current condition. It would be sadder still to see this continue.