In Which Josh Tries to Update...

Hey, Everybody! Today's update is being brought to you specially by Josh! Now, before anyone has a panic attack and thinks to themselves, "Wait, why is Josh updating? OMG! Is Jess okay?! What's going on?!?!," do not worry, Jess is perfectly fine ('cept for, you know, havin' cancer and all...). Dr. Chhabra and Jess just agreed yesterday that the best course of action at this point to get things actually moving along was to just admit her into Washington Hospital Center through the ER last night (mercifully avoiding the insurance company's pre-approval process as well). And, as anyone who has had to visit an ER without immediate life threatening illness or trauma should know, it was a looooong night.
You'll have to excuse me if my sleep deprived brain gets some of the details wrong in the ramblings to follow. Jess would probably remember this a lot better, but she decided it would be best to send her Mac home with me instead of leaving it with her while she was still in a state of transition between rooms, which is why I'm the one updating. Anyway, I think we got to the hospital sometime between 6:00 and 7:00 PM, whereupon we were immediately separated and ushered off into separate waiting rooms, one for patients and one for their families. After waiting for what could have been an hour or two (I quickly gave up on keeping track of the time), they finally got her onto a gurney and placed into a curtained of "room" in the ER to start running some tests, at which point I was allowed to join her and hang out. Once again, we mostly just waited around, sporadically visited by various doctors and nurses and attendants to check vital signs and take blood and whatnot. We were at this point visited by the prospect that they might not actually admit her into general care based on her condition alone, especially considering that the fever and high heart rate that Jess has been dealing with for the past couple of weeks magically disappeared last night. Eventually, though, Dr. Chhabra was called, and she was accepted as in inpatient.
At some point they also decided that they wanted to do a CT scan to make sure there wasn't any blood clotting happening in Jess's chest, which came back normal. After this they moved us into another room in the ER, this one with actual walls and a door. A lot of waiting happened here, and not much else. They gave Jess a little bag-lunch since she was starting to get a headache from not having eaten most of the day, which I mostly ended up eating. One of the doctors (I think he said he was a pulminologist, though he could have been the oncologist), mentioned that they're going to want to drain the fluid that's been building up in her left lung, which hopefully might help with the awful coughing/choking fits Jess has been having. It was getting on to well past midnight, and as the hour slowly marched on, we both grew incredibly tired and exhausted, and Jess's headache and subsequent nausea grew worse. Finally, by about 3:00 AM, she was moved to a waiting area from which she will be transferred to an actual room. At this point, I think she's still there. I got home around 4:oo this morning to get a few hours of sleep and make sure everything here was fine, and will be heading back out the door in a few minutes to spend some more time waiting around at the hospital for the day.
Anyway, I think we're still looking for someone to be Jess's hospital buddy tomorrow and probably the following day. If anyone can spare sometime, it would be most welcome and appreciated. I, unfortunately, can only afford to take so much time off from my craptastic job, and will need to get back to work tomorrow. Thanks for reading, and please keep us in your thoughts!

- Josh