Bernie's daughter sent this update for the Blog. I have been away from my e-mail for a few day so her e-mail was delayed getting posted.

"Hi Aunt Sue (or Rose, whomever is editing today!) This is Cyndi, Bernie's youngest.
I just got home from the hospital, (today is Sunday, September 11). Dad had a rough night and has slept most of today.

Doug couldn't get his laptop to connect to the internet from the hospital, so I told them I would update you when I got home.

Dad had a bypass in his legs. It's the same idea as the heart bypass, but to open clogged arteries in his legs instead. His surgery was supposed to be about an hour and a half long, but it ended up being a little over 5 hours. When the doctors got all of the bypass work done, they opened up the clamp on his artery, but nothing changed. They followed the artery up to the place where the clamp was and the artery was just mush. (Doug said that one doctor said it was turned to mush by the clamp, but the other doctor said they couldn't be sure of that.) They had to run a balloon up his artery passed the damage and reconstruct the artery with webbing. He slept through most of Friday. Saturday morning they changed from giving him morphine every 8 min. intravenously, to percocet by mouth. By about 3 or 4 in the afternoon he seemed very much more himself. He sat up and watch the Mariner's lose (again) with us and about 8 was ready for bed.

This morning when we got to the hospital (well, really about noon) he was out of it again. The nurses said he had a rough night with chest pain and wasn't able to sleep until about 2 o'clock. They had to go back to morphine, so he was pretty out of it today. I left him about 3 and he wasn't awake. When Mom had to keep waking him up to take another bite of food (about 1 o'clock) and he snapped at her to quit bugging him we figured he'd had enough lunch and needed sleep more.

I wish I could tell you he had another day like yesterday afternoon, but the nurses said they expected it, it's usually one good day and then one day to recoup from the good day. Yesterday he was very much like himself, he found out what it would take to get out of ICU and decided he could do it (three times over!) as long as the cute nurse would hold his hand! She was a good sport.

We'll update as soon as there's news. Please email me if I left any details out and any of this doesn't make sense!!

Thanks!
Cyndi"


Thanks, Cyndi. If you'll update again, I'll try to be more timely with 'editing.' Also, to All Our Dear Readers, you may also add comments directly to the Blog.