WEDNESDAY BALTIMORE
Colleen and I left the Jersey Shore for Maryland mid-morning. The 150-mile route, all interstate, took us across two great American rivers, the Delaware at Philadelphia and the Susquehanna where it empties into Chesapeake Bay, about thirty miles north of Baltimore. Around two o'clock in the afternoon we arrived at the main Johns Hopkins Hospital--Saint Johns Hopkins I'm now calling it--where we waited in Admissions for a few hours until Colleen was taken to a temporary bed in a special, softly-lit holding area on the 4th floor. There she donned her hospital gown, switched oxygen sources, had tests begin, blood drawn, IV put in place, liquid restriction set, sodium restriction set; also an X-ray, visit by tomorrow morning's anesthesiologist, dinner, and visits by two members of Dr. Mathai's pulmonology team, an intern and a resident, headquartered in the same building on the 8th floor. On and off she played Words With Friends, the online Scrabble game, on her iPad, including a turn in her fierce rivalry with sister Leslie, and perennial frustration with getting the letter "J."