Missing for a while

[trucker2000]

Wow, how true. :hug:

[AnneB]

My husband has improved enough to be transferred to a rehabilitation hospital today. Although he is still on the ventilator and has a feeding tube through the skin, he no longer needs to be in intensive care. They will start weaning him off the ventilator tomorrow and sitting him in a chair. The tube feeding will have to continue until the tracheostomy has been removed. He has lost a considerable amount of weight, but his spirits are good. His heart surgery went well, and his lung problems are a direct result of a lifetime of smoking cigarettes. I would appeal to everyone who is still smoking to quit now before irreparable damage has been done to your own lungs.

The hospital is part of the same system that I work for, and my boss has arranged for me to do my job in an office there. I can be close and still get some work done.

Thank you all for your prayers and good wishes.

[lswot]

Happy to hear that things are going better.
Nice boss.
Take care.

[Xjmt]

This all sounds very oppimitstic. I never had a boss like that. I quit smoking over 20 years ago.

[lswot]

I quit smoking over 20 years ago.

good for you!

[trucker2000]

This all sounds very oppimitstic. I never had a boss like that. I quit smoking over 20 years ago.

3 for me.

[lswot]

Yay!

[Xjmt]

[Ilana]

Cigarettes got my father... though he was 84... I know that doesn't sound tragic, but he was never an "old" man... it was pretty traumatic for us.

I hope your husband is quitting???

[lswot]

Sorry to hear that your Dad passed away, Ilana.
My Step-Dad had a 'scare'....but kept smoking. Fianally when they put him on oxygen he did stop but, by that time it didn't do any good.
I hope Donahue's husband heeds the warning and stops.

[Xjmt]

It isn't easy to stop smoking as I can attest to. Them ciggies ain't just paper and tobacco. They're loaded with so much other crap they should be declared illegal drugs. They are habit forming and they do create a dependency on the "user".

[brian]

They got my father at 68. Three packs a day for 55 years.

[Ilana]

Wow, Brian, I'm so sorry... as my brother said, at least my dad didn't die young, but it was so unnecessary, he could've lived to be 90!

Well, I hope we learn the lesson.

Thanks, Dennie!!!

Oh, and I know it isn't easy, but cigarettes have gotten expensive enough to be nearly prohibitive to a lot of people. Soon, the illicit trade will start and more crime....

[Xjmt]

Actually I used the cost of a pack of ciggies as a partial excuse to quit. Consider that when I was a kid an entire carton of ciggies cost somewhere around a dollar. ($1.00) When they increased to somewhere between $.50 and $.75 a pack I quit. But now with local "sin taxes" increasing the price even more I'm surprised there hasn't been more smuggling and gang wars. There have been some instances of smuggling (mostly into NYC from NC) but so far no gang wars.

At least none we've been informed of.

[AnneB]

Ronnie has been off the ventilator since Saturday, on supplemental oxygen through his tracheostomy tube, and this afternoon they moved the ventilator completely out of the room. Yay! He is very weak and has lost so much weight; he looks like he is 90 years old. It takes two people to get in from the bed to a chair. It's going to take a long time to recover.