Friday afternoon : nobody here but us chickens.

• Short version: I think we're staying in the hospital for another couple of days at least.
• Long version: Platelets, chickens and high blood sugar conspire to keep us in the hospital.

After Robert's spectacular walking demonstration this morning, the afternoon has been more of  a downer. I've learned from the physician assistant that they are still not happy with Robert's numbers. His sugar is still way too high, his platelets are too low, and they don't want him to leave the hospital until he stops seeing cows, dogs, cats, and parachuting chickens going through his room.

I haven't written in the blog about Robert's hallucinations, because they have seemed relatively minor and don't upset him. But although the staff has changed up his meds yesterday to try to eliminate the "visual disturbances," the strange visitors remain. Robert has let me know that the hospital is overrun with cats, dogs, cows, chickens, small children, and "women in mufti." The staff wants to make sure they are gone before he is discharged.

The question of why his blood platelets are so low is rather complicated because they have to figure out whether he is simply lost a lot during the surgery, and is on his way back to normal, or is something else going on that is preventing them from re-forming as they should. The bigger picture here is that if his platelets don't bounce back, he's in danger of getting blood clots. They can keep giving him transfusions of platelets in the short run, but they need to know that he is making his own again.

So that means the hematology fellow and the attending physician are drawing more blood, pouring over his medical history to look for clues, and doing an ultrasound on his legs to look for incipient clots. They assure me that the most likely explanation by far is just that he's taking a little longer than most people to bounce back with his own platelets. But because blood clots are so serious, they are looking into this energetically.

With all this going on, the physician assistant tells me that "It's still possible he could be going to rehab on Saturday," which I think is hospital-staff-speak for "We're trying our best to get all this under control but we just don't know how long it will take."