An Update as of 10/2/12

What would you want to know if you woke up in a hospital bed and found that you’d been asleep for a month?. Here’s some of what Bob has had to say:

I feel like this is my waking up day. I feel like I am waking up after a long sleep.

What happened? Why am I here?

Where is Charlottesville?

Where do Evan and Michelle live?(One time he even asked Evan, "Are you the President?")

Where do Bryn and Andres live? (sometimes when told “Las Vegas”, he wants to know “Are they high rollers?”)

Have you been here the while time? Thank you for being here. Were you here this morning? I have no memory of that.

This must have been scary for you. I’m so sorry for that. This must have been scary for our children.

I feel like a lot of people have been here to visit me today. (He seems to be blurring several days together, but also Skype seems to give his the feeling that he has been with people, which is really a wonderful blessing of technology!).

Bob’s memory is impaired and is likely to be for some time because that is the part of Bob’s brain that has been inflamed. So the conversations tend to loop around and repeat. The good thing is I can tell him the same silly jokes and still get a laugh, like that the part of his brain that is inflamed is the hippocampus --where all the hippopotami go to school, or that they have his breakfast, lunch, and dinner on direct deposit, but not me so I need to duck out to the cafeteria to get something to eat.

One of the doctors stopped by to give Bob what must be a standard talk about how being frustrated was a natural part of this healing process, but to try not to get too frustrated because it can lead to getting discouraged and not participating as actively in the healing process. This doctor has been a wonderful caring presence during these past three weeks while we’ve been at UVA, but he’s not had a chance to get to know Bob awake. Because at least so far, Bob has not expressed any frustration. Instead, in true Ben Zander fashion, he keeps saying “This is fascinating! I wonder why this happened? This will certainly give me a lot to reflect on for quite some time.”  And once he said, “I wonder what the etiology of this is?”

He also said “I had a dream that I rented a car. I didn’t rent a car did I?” And later in the evening when he was tired from a long day and a bit feverish from having had a dose of strong immune suppression medicine, “I feel like I’m in the middle of a long nightmare.”

They’ve told us that certain kinds of memory will be easier to retrieve than others. Bob seems to have a better memory for people than for events, and especially when he see faces or pictures. He has said to several of the nurses, “Your face seems familiar. I feel like this place is a community. We’ve lived in community before.”

That community of people ministering to Bob’s physical needs and tending so diligently to his well being seems about to change. We’ve been told that that he is doing well enough that he is likely to “graduate” out of intensive care and onto the floor today or tomorrow! This is very, very good news, but also a little bittersweet. How can we ever thank this skillful and hardworking team of people who have saved Bob’s life, and given him the opportunity to extend his trek of exploration and service?