March 25, 2008

First things first . . .

Bob Boze Bell continues to make a strong recovery, has gotten out of bed and even shaved himself this morning at the Kingman Regional Medical Center. And if he would have waited a couple of minutes before eating breakfast, the trach would have come out this morning, too. Kathy says that he had only taken four bites before they came in to remove it. That is now expected to happen tomorrow. She continues to rave about the care he is getting and how well the entire staff has treated her and Deena.

This is Charlie Waters writing in Boze's place again today. At his and Kathy's request, I am providing this update. But unlike yesterday, I am not going to try and mimic Boze's style. It is too damned hard—there is only one Boze.

Plus, as Melrose Mike quipped to Carole Glenn yesterday when she told him I had written the blog entry, "I could tell Bob didn't write it. There were no misspelled words and no prices listed for meals!" Boze and Kathy got a good laugh out of that this morning, as well as another line from Mike. Told that Boze couldn't talk because of the trach, Mike replied that it was possibly the only silver lining in this dark cloud.

Well, Mike, there was a misspelling ("stint" instead of "stent") in yesterday's blog, as pointed out in an e-mail today from Dan Harshberger. He thought I had done it intentionally to mimic Boze.

We can hardly wait until Wonderful Russ chimes in.

I hope you can tell from this entry that in addition to Boze, his friends and family are feeling much better now, too. As we all breathe a bit easier, the humor that has been such an important part of his life and relationships continues to surface. Yesterday, we mentioned how Gawd-awful the Exits practice was Saturday afternoon. Kathy's line now is: "It was so bad, it gave Bob a heart attack." But like Boze, the Exits recuperated and played a fine set.

Kathy expects that Bob will be in the hospital for one or two more days. The cardiologist has cleared him, but he has to be able to do certain things before the hospital can release him, such as walk up and down the hall and eat regularly. When they get back to Phoenix, he will rest for three weeks before starting cardiac rehab. Kathy would love to hear from any friends or True West faithful about their experiences with rehab.

We are also hoping that he can enjoy some of his down time reviewing the six hours of video that was shot at the party Saturday night. He will be pleased that the video production company, AVI Studios in Kingman, gave us an extra cameraman for free. He will not be pleased, however, by the opening welcome. He and I have disagreed for weeks about how it should go, but he wasn't there and the tone of the evening had changed dramatically in the few hours before the gig started. So, I just did it my way. He will get the final say, of course, as he edits it, and I expect much of the material about him will wind up on the cutting room floor—or wherever stuff goes in the digital age.

Among the great news are the results of the brain scans show no damage to one of the keenest and most fertile minds we all know. At times, the drugs fog his memory but he knows what happened, that he had a heart attack and that he is in the hospital. What he can't believe, however, is that he is "in Kingman?"

Kathy and Deena are fine and thank everyone for their thoughts, good wishes and prayers. While I always refer to her as the lovely Ms. Radina, some of the medical professionals marveled at how she took control of something that many of us would have wilted under. More than one time the words were heard: "That's one tough cookie."

Finally . . .

I told you yesterday about the actions of some people Saturday that doctors said saved our friend's life. As you might well imagine, it was a most hectic and stressful scene at the old Elks Lodge and stories are still filtering in. Please add to that list Exit band mate Terry Mitchell, whom others have told me took control of the group effort and did the compressions during the CPR, among other things. When I talked with him this morning, he didn't want me to mention that and was just thrilled that a band mate he had not seen in 40 years until Saturday had survived. (Unfortunately for Terry, he doesn't get to write this blog entry. I do. And Boze, Kathy, Deena and I want you to know it.)

Terry manages a Superlite plant outside of Flagstaff and for years has taken annual CPR training as part of his job. It was the first time he had ever used those skills and always wondered how he would react if he needed to do it. Now he and we know. Ironically, his last refresher course was about 10 days before we gathered in Kingman.

We are all so blessed.