Where's the Pump???

Thursday, we met Gordon, the pilot for the first leg of our trip to Cincinnati. The flight was longer than normal due to a strong headwind. We finally arrived in Beckley to meet the infamous Charlie, who loaded our gear while harrassing us about how much stuff we bring. I had brought cookies for both pilots, so I threatened to take his back. 

We headed off to Cincinnati amidst headwinds of 65 knots and lots of storm build up. We can't go over the storms due to their height, so we have to vector around them. At one point, looking out the window, it looked like we were surrounded by mountains of clouds. It was beautiful, but incredibly stressful for Charlie.

As a result of the head winds, the entire flight took significantly longer than normal. Charlie needed to let the storms die down before heading home, so he went to Dewey's Pizza with us, then off to the Riggs's to unpack and let Will rest. It had been a long day.

After returning Charlie to his plane, I headed to the grocery store, then back to Will to start an IV...only to discover that I had forgotten our IV pump. With a port, you have to use a pump; you can't run the IV by gravity, so we were totally stuck. Of all the things to forget, this was probably the worst.

So Friday morning, Will isn't ready for an ER, but he certainly is not looking great. Our IV company at home graciously agrees to overnight us a new pump, so now all I have to do is figure out how to get him safely through his MRI, the day, and the night without needing to go to the ER.

We had a long talk about how much Powerade Zero he would have to drink in order to compensate for the lack of fluids. And he would have to eat. There were no guarantees that he would avoid the hospital, but he would have to be the one to put forth the effort if he wanted to avoid it.

We were very fortunate that the weather here was cool and fairly dry which is significantly easier on him than the heat and humidity back home. He was able to hang out with his buddy, Chris, after his MRI, but that visit centered around the computer, so it was not physically stressful. By last night, he had done a phenomenal job of drinking and eating as he should, and while it went against my better judgement, we stayed home and did not head to the ER. The pump arrived safely this morning, and he has had fluids all day to try to catch up. He still looks pretty rough, but better than he did this morning. I am so grateful to our IV company for being so gracious and overnighting the pump to us.

This morning I was blessed with a long walk and chat with Becky G and yet more time with Becky R. It is such a gift to know that we have a second home and family who love us here in Cinci. Will slept through almost all of that, but tomorrow he gets to arise with us mere mortals and attend church.

We see Dr. C on Monday to review the results of the MRI and determine what state the brain stem is now in.