Homecoming

The voice on the voicemail informed me that Daddy had been discharged, and was reminding me he needed a ride home.

Duh!

I had already told him to expect me after lunch, meaning 1:00, and that's when I showed up, with Richard in tow carrying the home portable can of O2. I brought the bag of shirts, a diaper, and his winter jacket. For some strange reason they'd sent Paul home with those items when he was admitted a week earlier, but had kept his pants, socks and shoes. I still don't get that. But anyway, here we were with what he'd need.

As we passed by the nurses' station on our way to the room, I announced we were here to spring him, and suddenly we were the center of attention. "Oh dear, oh no, we're not sure he can go home yet."

OK, he's been discharged but can't go home? Seems he started feeling less well, and the doctor wanted to see him again before he left.

Fine, let's talk to her.

Well, she's gone to lunch, but she'll be back "soon."

Define "soon."

After she eats lunch.

We file into his room, set stuff down, find chairs. He's sitting in the large stuffed chair where they can lock the wheels so he doesn't fall when it rolls away from under him as he sits or stands. That seems to be its only good point. It's too deep to sit in comfortably, so it needs a pillow between chair back and patient back. It's too wide, so his elbows fall off the arm rests, particularly when he falls asleep, like he's doing now. It wakes him up, long enough to say "Hi," and get out about a sentence before he falls right back asleep again, mid-word. We get to watch that cycle through over and over for about an hour before he really wakes up. He's so sleep-deprived from being in the hospital that he can't stay awake, going in and out of REM sleep so fast one can hardly keep up. Needless to say, when he is "awake" he's unable to sort reality from dreams and says some pretty bizarre things.

I'm hoping it won't last when he gets home. It will be a humungous challenge to care for him when he's mostly not grounded in reality. I'm hoping a "real bed" and some real sleep will induce a better grip on reality.

Meanwhile staff come and go. We hear his nurse will come in and explain what's going on to us. We hear we're waiting for the doctor. We hear she's back from lunch and they'll flag her down as soon as feasible. We hear she's not back on the floor yet. The physical therapist comes in and puts him through some exercises. A nurse removes his catheter, and another later tries to assist him in self-cathing, with little luck. These are curved catheters and not the straight ones he uses at home, so I wonder if that's making a difference. Standing doesn't do it, so they have him lie down. There's a bit of success, but he's feeling like he still needs to go. He also feels the need for a bowel movement, even through there are new fresh brown spots on his bedding and his pressure-leggings and nobody has gotten around to changing anything yet. Obviously he's already had a rather sudden movement.

We call home to let them know what we don't know, especially when we might be home. The turkey has been put in the oven, since I promised him turkey dinner this evening after he missed the big family Thanksgiving. The clock rolls around, he wakes completely, finally, and asks to be put back in his bed so he can rest. The clock keeps rolling around.

Finally, a doctor shows up, the husband of the doctor we've been waiting for to finish what must be a very long lunch. He asks Daddy a few questions about going home, and he's given all the "right" answers. Daddy is right now determined to leave. He insists that his not feeling well earlier was all in his head, being afraid of leaving his vast support system of the hospital. Now he's fine.

OK, then, he can go home.

Now it's another parade through the room. One nurse gives us a stack of papers to read, and tells us to ask any questions. Let's start with one page saying give him no aspirin, and another says continue the baby aspirin daily. He's due a last antibiotic today, 2:00 PM, which had now passed, and why can't he get that at the hospital before he leaves? After a check of his chart, it's decided that somebody got the date wrong, the pill is due tomorrow, so we still have to run over to his pharmacy, 26 miles in the other direction, and pick that up. But it won't be a wasted trip, because now he need iron supplements, and.... But, hey, tomorrow's fine.

Yeah, well, tomorrow's busy, because the dog has to go to the vet, so we'll be shuffling schedules around so somebody's there while I'm gone, and he gets lunch at the right time, and....

Then there's the IV needle that needs to get removed from his arm before he can go, and getting him dressed, and getting out the door for real, into the now icy-cold car, and home, and into the house and down in his favorite chair, all just in time to be served turkey dinner, dressing, cranberry salad, au gratins, and juice.

Whew!

He's so tired he goes to bed just after 7:00. Normal bedtime has been between 8:00 and 10:00, usually hitting 9:00. Of course, he makes up for it by getting up before 5:00, so guess who gets very little sleep, since I'm not ready to go to sleep before my usual time. And now he's very uncomfortable, since the plumbing isn't working. Add to that, he can't remember after a week away where everything is the house is. At 5:00 he's already been trying to figure out where in his O2 tubing is the button to push for the nurse. He finally yells, and the baby monitor, finally plugged in again after disconnecting for my brother's visit, wakes me up. (Yes, Steve, I did disconnect it. I don't need to know if you snore. Really!)

But his plumbing is the big worry. According to him, the first self-cath produces 4 drops. This is after asking me where they are when he's standing next to them in their usual space. The next yields 6. Two more produce a bit of very temporary relief, but not really emptying the bladder. His belly is taut, usually sign of constipation and/or gas. We wonder if he needs to go back to urgent care and get a foley and bag put back in, if that part was discontinued too soon.

But I have to take the dog to the vet. His distemper shot is due, and being a cocker spaniel, he has another ear infection. During his exam, I spy a brown mouse scurrying under the door into the next room and mention it to the vet. She freaks out, which I find a tad odd. After all, it's just a mouse. Sure, they eat food and might carry diseases, and probably aren't good for the business's PR, but it's still just a mouse.

They know there's a mouse problem. She hates those sticky traps, won't use poisons in case the clients get into them, or the mice do and stink in the walls while they decompose, and have been using a little tunnel kind of trap that electrocutes the mice as they walk through. It's an interesting diversion, but I need to get this visit over and get back to Daddy and see what can/must be done. The dog goes home with an antibiotic that gets squirted deep in his ear canals after they get cleaned, twice a day. It's mixed with something that makes it get sucked right through the skin, so whoever's treating him needs to wear gloves. Luckily, with Daddy, we have a nearly full box of them at the moment.

As I walk in the house, Daddy informs me the nurse has called, knows about his "peeing problem", and is coming right over.

Huh? What nurse? Who called her? Why is somebody sending her over? Hospitals don't do that. It's Saturday. Is this just another of those unreality post-dream confusions? I must confess to sounding a little skeptical and patronizing at the same time as I tried to make sense of what he was saying. He insisted it wasn't a dream, and, much as he needed to pee, was waiting for her to show up first. After a half hour, I insisted he go try now since he was so uncomfortable.

While he was in the bathroom, sure enough, a car pulls in the driveway and a woman gets out, toting a large multi-chambered black case up the driveway. Oh Halleluia, it's Randy!

Randy is the county health nurse, in charge of his home health aids. I had left her a message that he was to be discharged, so that the aids would know to start in again on Monday. Now here she was, checking out his health, his new meds, his capabilities and needs, and setting up Medicare to take over payments for whatever they would cover post-hospitalization so for a bit he doesn't have to pay himself. Again. Randy is the one who visits when we get anxious about his care, who has tips for getting done what needs to be accomplished, and helps me to keep thinking I can keep doing this.

In all the visit lasted well over an hour, and ended with her supervising him self-cathing to see what was really going on. Her conclusion was that he was peeing a lot more than he thought, not being able to see or hear the stream. She also added a bunch of stuff to the shopping list - since I hadn't gotten out of the house yet to do it. Mostly it was stuff to keep his bowels moving, to relieve that pressure. She also reassured him that his feeling sick after leaving the hospital was typical, since these days they release patients earlier and expect them to recover at home, decreasing health care costs to the insurance companies. He should expect a slow recovery, but he should expect recovery.

I think we both felt better after her visit. Last night and most of today he's perked up a bit, although the slow improvement in breathing has him discouraged. Tonight, after a pretty good day including watching the Vikings win against Washington, he insisted on going to bed for the night at 4:00. He could not be persuaded that he could take a nap, have supper, and then go to bed. He finally let me talk him into having his medications and some juice first. But absolutely no supper!

After all, he might not live that long!

Alllllrighty then. I just finished putting him to bed, telling him if he didn't last the night, we'd deal with it in the morning. I'm just afraid for him it means morning is going to come about 3:30 AM! That means for me too. He'll want to get up and dressed, have coffee, and sit in his chair in the living room and listen to his radio.

I get to go back to work tomorrow. I'd just like some sleep first.