Our New Journey, Part 2

Things changed drastically for us on Saturday, June 26. Dan had been moved from Surgical ICU to the cardiac recovery floor the day before. A friend and his daughter were visiting; we were watching the U.S.A./Ghana World Cup game. Dan decided to go for a walk in the hallway; they advise post-op patients to get up and walking as soon as possible. He chatted with the Physician's Assistant (PA)in the hall and came back, sat down heavily, seemed out of breath. We put his canula back on him, but it did not seem to have any effect. Next thing I knew, our friend decided to push the call button for the nurse, and Dan was toppling over in his chair. Thank goodness our nurse was coming in the room at that moment, she took charge immediately and yelled for help. We were ushered out of the room just as I heard an announcement over the loudspeaker, "Code Blue, 6 West" (the location of our room).
We were taken to the lounge on that floor, and soon after a pastor came to see us. The first thing he said was that he was not bringing any bad news. After that, one of the nurses who had taken care of Dan prior to his surgery came to see us and reassured us that he had a pulse. After that, the PA came to see us, reassured us that he was much better than he was 7 minutes ago, and that they would be moving him back to Surgical ICU. Our friend volunteered to go and get our personal belongings out of the room, according to the PA, it looked "like a bomb went off in there."
So we were sent to the waiting room in the SICU; it must have been over an hour before we were allowed to see him. By that time, our son had arrived; also my brother, who was planning to visit anyway, had also shown up. I was extremely grateful to our friends for sticking with me until they showed.
Meanwhile, the docs were trying to figure out what caused Dan to collapse. From the way he was acting before his collapse, he appeared to be "ahead of the curve" (cardio-god's words) in terms of recovery, and there was talk of discharging him after the weekend. It seemed like every kind of specialist was being consulted; I remember a pulmonologist doing a bronchoscopy, because they suspected there might be a big mucus plug in his lungs. It turned out there was no big plug but they did suction some out. Later, we found out that Dan had a big pleural efflusion; in addition, he was suffering from sepsis. Dan's second stay in SICU lasted until July 18.