11:56pm
Nathaniel is settled back into the transplant floor at HUP. We’ve retrieved all his belongings from the rehab hospital and set up all his stuff in his new room.
Right now it’s all a story of antibiotics, since the evidence is that he has an infection, but no one is sure where. Fortunately (?), he’s also feeling more congested and short of breath than usual and this may be a case where the blood tests showed the infection entering town before the germs got the circus tents up. That could mean that this is a short visit and he gets released “home” to the hotel.
On the other hand, most people don’t get prescribed a run of antibiotics for two or three days — taking too few antibiotics to fully kill the infection is a great way to cause drug-resistance, and the last thing we all need is another MRSA-like infection running around. (He does not, btw, have MRSA. Or a whole bunch of other things I could name and won’t.) So taken from that standpoint I highly doubt that he’ll be released before the new year, and I’m mentally preparing myself to spend New Year’s Eve at the hospital. Most years we just play video games until the ball drops anyway, so this would just be a new location for an old tradition.