Welcome to Hope Lodge - Day 2 of 10 - September 29, 2010

Bruce came with us into the city this morning as planned. The iv fluids, potassium, sodium bicarbonate, etc. went pretty smoothly and Pete slept for most of the time again. The only problem he experienced today was something that had surfaced yesterday. Hiccups. He had a few bouts of them when he would eat or drink something yesterday, but they only lasted for a minute or so and then he'd be done with them. Today, though, when he took a drink of water they started and just didn't want to stop and they were quite strong. D said she would give him something (Ativan) that relaxes the muscles of the diaphragm, because the hiccups can become very severe in some individuals.

Once his ivs were finished and he was again hooked up to the infusion pump we got in the car and headed toward Hope Lodge. Yeah, right. Easier said than done. New York city is a grid of avenues and cross streets that appear, on paper, to be easily navigated. We started out on 15th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues and wanted to get to 32nd Street between 6th and 7th Avenues. Two blocks over and 17 blocks up. Except many of the steets are "one way"s and it seems that they're never going the way you actually need to go. Then there are all the streets that you are prohibited from turning onto, whether they're one way or two way or whether you want to turn right or left. Combine with the streets that you "just can't get to from here" to complete the headache. 32nd just happens to be one of those streets. If you happen to be travelling along 32nd Street you will suddenly find yourself blocked by a building. In our case, we wanted to turn onto 32nd Street. We passed 30th, then 31st and then 33rd. Wait, what happened to 32nd? Right were it should have been was a huge building.

33rd was going the wrong direction so we drove until we got to a street that was headed in the right direction, turned there but when we got to the steet we wanted to turn onto, there was a "no turn" sign. We just kept "spiraling" around and around until we finally got to our destination. All I can say is that it confirmed that our decision to send the car home with Bruce was a wise one.

Hope Lodge is lovely. We're on the 12th floor and right now I'm ready to head over to the kitchen, which happens to be directly across from our room, and make myself a nice cup of herbal tea. More about the Lodge, maybe with pictures, later.