Barbara Zimmerman

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.  This is Miriam, Barb's friend and Setty, my daughter.


Barb started with a cold last week and it apparently got worse to the point where she could not climb up the stairs.  Monday evening her dear friends and neighbors, Meg and George, got worried that Barb had not picked up the newspaper from the front of the house so they went in to check on her.  She was in such a state that they called 911.  When she arrived at the hospital, the medical staff said she had arrived in the nick of time.  By this time she had severe pneumonia and  sepsis.  I had no idea this was going on as Meg and George did not have my contact info.  They contacted Zak and Katherine, Barb's son and daughter, who also did not have my contact information (we corrected this faux pas and now we are all happily connected).  Zak put on his detective hat and found my contact info.  I rushed to the hospital Tuesday evening and spent the night with Barb.  They explained that she was very sick and was going to have a thoracic surgeon evaluate her lung scan to see how best to drain her left lung, which had several pockets of very thick fluid.  Fortunately, they opted for the least invasive option of inserting a tube in hr lung to see if it would drain.  It drained an amazing amount of gunk, which is great, so there was no need for the full thoracic surgery.  Yesterday was a very bad day for Barb.  She was in a lot of pain with that tube in her chest and very uncomfortable.  After some improvement on Wednesday, she suddenly got worse on Thursday morning.  Doctors said the infection had spread and now she had arrhythmia, they could not keep her blood pressure high enough even with meds and her kidneys were not functioning properly.  It was a very scary day yesterday.  Setty, my daughter, arrived last night and we stayed with Barb until 11 PM.  She was doing quite a bit better by last night, thank God.  This morning Setty was at the hospital early so she could speak with Barb's doctors.