Cute Robot Day

Today is Robot Day.

We read an article about the first in-home robot (yours for only $500) from New Scientist magazine. Then we watched a video about it. Then we read about six design criteria for safe robots. THEN we read Glitch, a short story about a robot, by Hugh Howey. [will update later w/ links]

Daddy's nurse came in during Glitch to change his VAD dressing. This is for the site where the drive line exits his skin. This is a sterile process that we will need to learn because he'll need it done every week after discharge. They are doing it every couple of days now, though. She said that I could stay and keep reading to him if I wore a mask (previously we've always been asked to step out). The mask only partially filtered out the colorful metaphors in Glitch. The nurse said that was the most fun she'd ever had while changing a VAD dressing.

Reading aloud is also good practice for Julie's eyes.

Anyway, the unifying theme for Robot Day is the fact that Roger v2.0, Cyborg Edition now has a new piece of hardware. They put in his permanent pacemaker/AICD between 10 & 1 today. The much awaited, much anticipated, much heralded, much vaunted-- you get the idea.

And the "cute" part, well, I suppose that's personal opinion.

I put two and two together, (too). He thought that they were putting in the pacemaker over the weekend, and so thought he was done with getting operations. THAT's why he was upset about going in today. Now he's REALLY relieved to be done with operations. I re-explained what happened over the weekend. Also, his x-ray was clear RE the "broken wing" pain in his left shoulder. It seems to aggravate when he moves, so they think it's the drainage tube moving around and will keep an eye on it.

Speaking of, they're going to do a fancy swallow test probably tomorrow. They'll have him drink barium and watch where it goes under radiology. They're still concerned that he's aspirating because of his cough. Also, he's pretty thirsty and can only drink while sitting straight up, and is still on a fluid restriction. We can see that his hands are a little swollen, though. This is an issue with heart failure because if the heart doesn't pump enough, fluids get backed up. It can go in the lungs but also in to the tissues. We talked today about how his hands would swell up sometimes in the past.

We filled out Daddy's meal requests for tomorrow. Cheesy omelette for breakfast, a hamburger for lunch, and rotisserie chicken for dinner. He says: you just can't beat that.