Day 62: Family Ties

June 11, 2017
Visalia, CA

Today’s been pretty good. Still staying the night in the hospital, but I’ve felt great today and should be discharged tomorrow. I’m going to back up a little bit and provide some details on my hospital stay so far. Since I first arrived it was thought that I had pulmonary edema which is essentially severe altitude sickness. Fluid gets trapped in the lungs and your body basically fails to function properly. If you want a better explanation, Google it. There is also a possibility that I have pneumonia. It’s hard to tell since HAPE and pneumonia have basically the same symptoms with the difference being one is caused by altitude and the other is caused by bacteria. That being said I’ve been on antibiotics since arriving. 

One of the major things that has made the whole experience exponentially easier has been being flown to Visalia which is the only place in California that I have a relative, my cousin Brett and his wife Kaeli. Brett has been here several times now and I can’t thank him enough for that. Honestly I think this has been the most we’ve talked at once. It’s so nice to be able to have conversations with somebody without any backstory. 

I’m beginning to get antsy, though. They finally let me do some walking on my own as well so I wound up doing laps around the floor for about 30 minutes before settling down for some dinner. 
Sounds like I will be here for another night as well. The doc wants me to have an x ray in the morning before releasing me, but it sounds like I should be out of here by tomorrow evening.