{"id":521,"date":"2005-04-28T16:07:00","date_gmt":"2005-04-28T20:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=521"},"modified":"2005-12-05T13:11:00","modified_gmt":"2005-12-05T18:11:00","slug":"up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/up","title":{"rendered":"Up!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The 2pm visit was good. Dad&#8217;s been moved up into a chair, which will help his lungs drain. He&#8217;s pissed off, miserable and complaining, which we take as good signs, since it means he&#8217;s involved. His strongest emotional reaction came when his girlfriend told him that some guy named Constantine got booted off of American Idol last night. &#8220;You mean&#8230; they kept that fat f*** on the show? It&#8217;s all rigged&#8230;&#8221; he rasped.<\/p>\n<p>Which is to say, he&#8217;s talking. When I saw him this morning, they were just taking the breathing mask off of him, and putting oxygen tubes in his nose. He tried signing some letters to me to spell a word, but I had ZERO idea what he was trying to convey.<\/p>\n<p>The nurse told him, &#8220;You can speak, sir.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He rasped something, so I leaned in. This time, he said, &#8220;Transfusion?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I said, &#8220;Yeah. You had so much internal bleeding that they had to perform a transfusion.&#8221; I knew he was terrified of getting someone else&#8217;s blood, for dated reasons, but I had to be honest with him.<\/p>\n<p>He looked crestfallen, and shrugged with his eyebrows. So I did have to be honest, but I didn&#8217;t have it in me to tell him that they&#8217;d already put in 6 units by the time I ran out last night. His girlfriend says she thinks they maxed out an even dozen pints, before his blood pressure finally got up to a good level.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, his numbers are all looking good, and the nurses anticipate stepping him down to the cardiac ward tomorrow, if the numbers keep improving and they have a bed available. I&#8217;m gonna nap for a while then head back for the 8:30pm session.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks again. I promise to post some goofy\/funny stuff this weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 2pm visit was good. Dad&#8217;s been moved up into a chair, which will help his lungs drain. He&#8217;s pissed off, miserable and complaining, which we take as good signs, since it means he&#8217;s involved. His strongest emotional reaction came when his girlfriend told him that some guy named Constantine got booted off of American &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/up\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Up!&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s4C7K-up","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":661,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/stephons-assist","url_meta":{"origin":521,"position":0},"title":"Stephon&#8217;s Assist","author":"Gil","date":"September 6, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been a critic of Stephon Marbury for years, since he played for the Nets. Even a few weeks ago, when I heard him in a radio interview, I thought, \"He's as selfish as ever; he just doesn't get it.\"But at the NBA's announcement of donations for hurricane victims (in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;basketball&quot;","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2089,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/rules-for-rufus","url_meta":{"origin":521,"position":1},"title":"Rules for Rufus","author":"Gil","date":"June 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Since we're going away for 48 hours, a coworker of mine and his wife have volunteered to house-sit and take care of Rufus. I decided to write them a little guide to taking care of our boy. Because it grew so insanely out of hand, I decided to subject you\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Adventures in Rufus and\/or Otis&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Adventures in Rufus and\/or Otis","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/adventures-in-rufus-and-or-otis"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":610,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/complications","url_meta":{"origin":521,"position":2},"title":"Complications","author":"Gil","date":"July 2, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Dad's back in the hospital. He's been (dry) coughing pretty badly ever we got him home after his heart surgery at the end of April. He's also had some alternating fevers in the last month-to-six weeks. We took him for CAT scan on Thursday, which revealed an abscess in his\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1122,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/friend-in-need","url_meta":{"origin":521,"position":3},"title":"Friend in Need","author":"Gil","date":"September 25, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I've got a request for you, dear readers. A friend of mine (the Brooding Persian, whom I met in grad school) is suffering through a psychotic breakdown and an undetermined autoimmune disease (the latter seems to be causing the former, as an organic brain disorder). He's living in the Seattle\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/friend-in-need#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4055,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/ru-news","url_meta":{"origin":521,"position":4},"title":"Ru-news","author":"Gil","date":"June 11, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I haven't written a Rufus-specific post since Sunday! You must be dyin' for news! There's no major news. He seems to be recovering well, and is showing less and less inclination to nosh on his stitches. He still tries to get at the one unstitched area, but that's healing over\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Adventures in Rufus and\/or Otis&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Adventures in Rufus and\/or Otis","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/adventures-in-rufus-and-or-otis"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":284,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/cuban-launches-missiles","url_meta":{"origin":521,"position":5},"title":"Cuban Launches Missiles","author":"Gil","date":"July 21, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm a bit of a moron about finance and money matters, even though I've gained a good deal of expertise on the pharma business in the last 5 years. Mark Cuban is too easily goofed on as a self-promoting maniac, but it's important to remember that he's not just some\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Big Business&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}