Dad was trying to tell me something else he wanted. I tried and tried to figure it out but couldn't get it. He kept laughing at me. I told him I'm glad he can laugh. I asked him if I'm pathetic. He said no. I asked if I'm useless, and he said yes. I asked if he wanted me to keep trying to guess and he said no. I asked if he's giving up on me and he said yes. But then I thought of a question I knew he would answer yes. I asked if he wanted to talk to his brother Ef, and he said yes! So we called Ef, and he talked to him for a few minutes. I'm sure it was wonderful for Dad to hear his brother's voice.
Right now, the respiratory therapists are here giving Dad a new kind of breathing treatment. They had been doing albuterol nebulizer treatments, but that didn't really help, because his breathing problems aren't caused by his asthma, but rather by being in bed. When patients lie in bed, they breathe very shallow breaths, because they're not working hard enough to force them to breathe more deeply. So as Carol put it, "Their lungs get lazy and full of crud." So now they're doing something called PEP, or positive expiratory pressure. It forces him to breathe against pressure, which forces air into the deeper parts of the lungs. They're also going to try CPAP tonight while he sleeps. They're taking good care of him, staying on top of everything.
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