We've often kippled.

[mrissa]

Yesterday was the worst of the days Grandpa has been in the hospital so far. Today is better than yesterday. While Grandpa is not able to do a lot, I have gone in and read to him twice, once about the Elephant's Child and once about Taffy and her daddy. (We will get to the other one about Taffy and her daddy, the one with the alphabet, tonight or tomorrow, I bet.) This seems to lower his heart rate (lower is good at this point) and generally be a good thing for both of us.

I finished writing "Carter Hall and the Motley Lions" this morning. In some ways this is a miscalculation: I wanted to be able to finish the story I was working on while we're here on this trip so that it didn't become "that story from when Grandpa was so sick" with bad associations. But I wrote three thousand words on it this morning between PT sessions, and now it's done, and I have to come up with another story I can work on while I'm here, and also try to finish that. So I have that running as a background process while we're sitting and waiting in the ICU Family Lounge and not much is going on.

This is going to be awhile, though. We don't have a time frame yet, but there are several steps between Grandpa's current condition and "home and healing steadily and reliably."

My cousin (no official relation) is coming down this evening, so we'll get some time with her tonight and tomorrow morning up at the hospital. Not the most congenial setting, but she'll be glad to see Grandpa, and we'll be glad to see her. I have several cordial acquaintances in Omaha these days but not really any friends any more, and only one who isn't independently mobile in CB, so it'll be nice to have Kari in--family and friend all in one.