Carole was taken down to have her pacemaker inserted around 9:25 EDT.

Looking forward to updating folks later, but have a bunch of things to do in town first.  Stay tuned this afternoon!

The surgeon had an emergency surgery to do so Carole’s was put off a day.

She put the time to good use, though, working hard in therapy.

Carole is looking forward to the pacemaker placement tomorrow.  She’s getting some cool new tech, which will actually be inserted through an artery (like a cardiac catheterization) and threaded up to her heart.

Carole Ann will hand off to the next crew, Melissa and Colin, tomorrow as well.

I look forward to reporting on a successful procedure tomorrow.

Carole will be receiving a “micro-pacemaker” described by a cardiologist friend of Jim’s as a “minimally invasive and elegant” solution.  Of course – who would expect differently of Carole!

They will wean her off her blood thinners starting today and put in the pacemaker on Wednesday. We think rehab will happen sometime after that.

Carole could have visitors today, much to everyone’s delight.

Jim talked to the cardiologist this morning.  He will have the cardiologist who does pacemakers do the evaluation tomorrow.   Carole needs a stable heart-rate to be accepted into rehab.

Either way, tomorrow ends isolation, so it is likely that Carole can finally have visitors again tomorrow, depending on what’s going on with Covid in general in the hospital.  We are crossing our fingers

Carole’s heart keeps “pausing” for a few seconds.  We think the cardiologist will be in tomorrow (even though it’s Easter) to take a look.  They may decide she needs a pacemaker.  We’ll see.

Colin and Mel are scheduled to come down for a week starting Wednesday.

Carole is still in the hospital.  They are worried about the way her heart is behaving, so that needs to get settled before anything else happens.  Val and Jim are handing off to Jerry for the weekend, and then Carole Ann plans to come down.

Harry got out to shoot 9 holes today, which was good.  Jim got out for his run. Val is trying to be gracious about the sales guy who thought that the woman described as “Harry’s wife” and “John’s mom”
was me.  I shall be calling John “Son” for the nonce.

We are all very tired of the waiting game. Carole is still in the hospital, where, to be fair, the care is excellent, provided by staff who really care.  The communication from the social service case worker team is not great, and we don’t understand why we are not hearing from them, but, given the excellent care, we are trying really hard not to be “that guy.”  Jim is on the case, and trying to be reasonable.  As a wise colleague of his reminded him today “everybody is exhausted.”  That is universally true for hospital staff, everywhere, so we really NEED to be kind and patient.  I am here to tell you that an excellent meal at Bianca’s and a little Pinot Grigio is helping me with that, but Jim and Dad are having to get by on excellent food plus lemonade.

P.S. if you are ever offered a sandwich from Captain Bill’s in North Fort Myers, do not turn down this opportunity. John and Kim catered last night’s dinner and it was amazing.

So yeah, we are grumpy and impatient, but exceedingly well fed.

Jim had a nice long talk with a nurse on Carole’s floor.  She’s doing well – she’s been calm and did 45 minutes of speech therapy this morning.   Apparently, the workflow at this hospital is to work on discharges AFTER ICU and inpatient folks, so we may hear about the next placement today, or maybe not.

Meanwhile, Harry is out hitting golf balls, Jim is taking conference calls, John is taking care of the bills, and Val is running errands and doing laundry.  A bit of normality in the whirlwind!

Harry and Carole’s Inverness house sale closed yesterday, so that is one big worry off their plate.

Carole Ann and Jack will go home on Monday, as Jim and I come back down to spell them for the week.

Jim figures with things calmer he may actually be able to work remotely.  The pandemic has been good for flexibility on this point!