Sleepless in Las Vegas

Ok, a few more details about last night. I returned to the hospital about 5 pm last night. I started packing. Think "My bags are packed, I'm ready to go." Then I visited with some of my new friends in the peds ward. See I knew it would happen. We were just waiting for the Orthopedic Surgeon to come.

In the mean time, just for a little bit of drama, Jared decided to spike his temperature up to 100.8. This of course bought me a first class ticket on the freak out train. But I tried to just keep taking deep cleansing breaths. The doctors assured me that they still didn't consider it a temperature. He is on all the antibiotics that he needs to be taking, blah, blah, blah. I tried to be convinced. I really wanted to be. And given what happened on Monday, I almost convinced myself. But at that point I started thinking, here we go again, there is no way we will leave.

Finally long lost doctor showed up. He looked at Jared's open wound. He pushed and prodded all around, trying to get more yucky stuff to come. At one point he did get a little bit of goop to come out of the wound. He said "That doesn't look good." I took a loop on the Disappointment Roller Coaster. Then miraculously the more he examined him, he didn't get any more evil goop, and so then he said the most beautiful words in the world. "I don't see why you can't go home."

They started the discharge papers. I made four trips to the car. Holy overabundance of crap, Batman. And yes, I brought home every one of my 10 pillows that I managed to accumulate. A parting gift, if you will. They would have just thrown it away. I helped Jared get into his clothes. At this point I had this horrible feeling, What if his feet have grown in the past month? It could totally happen, and has in the past. But no worries, his shoes did fit.

Jared was pretty anxious about going home. I was standing outside of the room talking with the nurses and doctors and he kept either texting me or calling me to say when would we go.

Finally it was the long awaited for time. A nurse wheeled him out to the car, and we were out of there. Before we even got out of the garage, Jared was complaining about not being able to straighten his leg all the way. I stopped and put his seat back and that seemed to help.

If there was any way I could driven with my arms out all around the car, I would have. You know when you try to protect something, like nobody even think of coming near us or touching us, or anything like that. Not since I had a newborn in the car, have I driven with so much caution.

Finally we were actually home. He came in and laid down on his bed that has been sat up in the family room. It seemed to work out well. I started unloading and arranging. I cleared one shelf from the bookshelf for all of his medical supplies.

Jared decided that he wanted his bed on the other side of the room. So I managed to rearrange that to his liking. I think it had to do with the view of the TV.

The home health nurse came at 10, about a half an hour after we got home. She trained both Jared and I on flushing the pic line. It is a bit scary in the whole idea, but in practice it wasn't so bad. It is a lot to remember and be responsible for though.

She finally left at 11 and I then needed to run to Walgreens and get his prescriptions filled. They were things he was suppose to take that night. I don't know why I didn't think to make them give it to him at the hospital. That would have given me some breathing room. While I was waiting to get the prescriptions, I ran across the street to Smiths to get a few groceries. This was much needed, and I got some Ensure for Jared.

Finally, with groceries and prescriptions I got back home about 12:30. I was so tired and Jared was sleeping. Dang, I had to wake him up to take his medicine.

This is where things went down hill. He had to go to the bathroom, and walked in there. The toilet, of course was plugged, and had over flowed earlier when the nurse was there. Because of course it would. Why, not? Just bring it life, bring it all. So I left him in there to run around and look for the plunger. I couldn't find it anywhere and he was screaming for me to come back and help him. Finally we got him back in bed, and I found the plunger, which was of course in that very bathroom.

Next crisis, he said that the mattress was poking him. So Marion helped him stand up and I took the mattress off. This didn't go so well, as Marion forgot about the pic line and held that arm. By now Jared had worked himself up into being pretty upset.

Finally at 2 am I laid down on my mattress. Over the next two hours, Jared needed something about every ten minutes. Things like, I'm too hot take my blanket off, and turn the fan on. Then it was I'm too cold, put my blanket on and turn the fan off. Or I need a drink of water. Or I need pain pills. Or can you put pillows under my legs. Or I don't think we should have come home from the hospital. Or. Or. Or. Think your worst night with a newborn that can talk. I suppose talking is better than screaming. But not restful.

I am not surprised. I knew that it would be a different kind of hard, once we got home. In retrospect, I think we should have stayed one more night, and then come home in the morning. Some how in my naive mind, we would have come home at 9 and gone right to bed. Silly, silly me.

Then the phone started ringing at 8:30 this morning, with doctor offices calling to confirm and change appointments. Then the home health nurse called to say she would be there sometime in the next two hours.

This woke Jared up and he was hungry. Good sign. I made him his favorite French T0ast, and now he is sleeping. I am pretty sure that I will be able to get a nap or two or three today.

A friend of mine wrote me some advice yesterday "When you are going through hell, don't stop." Wise counsel. This will pass. And pretty much we have no where to go but up from here. I am pretty sure this is what the bottom looks like. I have seen it before, and can recognize it well.

We still have many doctor appointments, and medicines to take. But for sure we are on the road to recovery and normalcy, what ever that is. Of course my life never was normal to begin with, so maybe that is why I have coped as well as I have.

All in all, I think things are the best we could hope for. Kind of a best of the worst if you will.

We still have some adjusting to do. There is not a big space for him to walk around like we did at the hospital. All the hall carpets get in the way of his walker. Maybe I will just take those all up. But things will get better, they have to. And for now I will cling to that hope, like a Titanic passenger to a life jacket.