It's Saturday and Shirley and I are hanging around in her room. Ashley from Physical Therapy came by and Shirley took an nice walk around the ward. When she came back to the room, she worked on sit to stand to sit on the seating platform on the walker. She found this fairly challenging and was a little disappointed until Ashley measured the height and discovered it was two inches lower than the seating height she was working from yesterday. Lower elevation means more effort and once we knew the reason, it was a victory instead of a frustration.
Shirley's brother Pete came by for a visit around 4:15. While he was here, there were a flew flashes in the sky and claps of thunder. About an hour later, we had an extended hail storm that left a blanket of white on the grassy rooftop of the hospital entrance we can see out of the window.
Then, around 5:45 the hospital lost power. The first time, it was just a surge and came right back on. Then a few minutes later, it went off again and the building went to emergency power only. That means, one fluorescent light in the room and two wall outlets. Let me tell you, there is a lot of electronic equipment in this room and choosing what is most essential is a challenge.
In our case, we opted for the IV pump and Shirley's bed (she has an inflatable mattress and within a minute of the outage, it was deflated). We came up with a plan of attack so that if the outage was extensive, we would rotate the IV pump and two wound vaccuums between the one outlet, as all have a battery that could last for a few hours.
Fortunately, we didn't need to put our contingency planning into play as the power was restored 95 minutes later.
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