It's been a busy and eventful weekend, and I haven't been in a mood to write. So many things have happened in such a short time.

First off, my uncle is in the hospital in an intensive care ward in Oakland. I spent this Memorial day keeping my aunt company for three hours and just talking to her about what happened. They dont' really know what's wrong with him, other than the fact that his lungs are bleeding. They sort of ruled to tuberculosis, but they just don't know.

My aunt said my uncle had a lung ailment for three weeks and was short of breath. She kept telling him to go to the doctor but he didn't want to. On Thursday he practically fainted at work so he agreed to go see his PCP on Friday. The PCP rushed him to the emergency room so he could go to the hospital for tests. On Saturday he was talking but still short of breath so they put him on oxygen and did a TB test, which turned out to be negative.

Despite the oxygen, he still had trouble breathing, so they put him in ICU on Saturday night and stuck tubes down his throat and put him on a respirator. My aunt finally started calling people on Sunday night, because the doctor said people should come now because his lungs were filling up with blood and he was close to renal failure.

My uncle's illness came as such a surprise. He seemed to be in good health, and other than the lung ailment seemed fine. I wished my uncle wasn't so stubborn and had gone to the doctor when he first starting noticing his lung ailment. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be sitting in the hospital now if he had only gone to the doctor.

My aunt said the timing of my uncle's illness is not that great because he was thinking of retiring from work next year. They even have plans to go on a cruise to Alaska at the end of June, which my aunt doesn't want to cancel yet in case my uncle gets better.

The doctors have absolutely no idea what's wrong with him and they've got him on steroids and strapped to his bed so he doesn't thrash around and yank the tubes out of arms and mouth. My poor uncle. When I was there they decided to keep him sedated to keep him calm to stop him from breathing so hard.

The medical staff are afraid to give him morphine because of his blood pressure and because they haven't ruled out that he might have a heart attack that triggered his lungs to bleed. I think he was thrashing around because he's in a lot of pain. Thankfully one of the nurses decided to give him some vicodin, which I don't think helps his pain at all because my aunt told me my uncle takes vicodin for pain at home for his gout.

My family is flying in from all over the country to see my uncle. I'm going to spend most of my time with them this week and over the weekend. Hopefully the doctors can figure out why my uncle is so sick.