Oh my - Thanksgiving Day and I'm SO ready to go home! I wake up early and ask a nurse to plug in my automatic curling iron and please get out my mirror and brush from my computer case and put it on my tray table. I want to look bright and chipper when the doctor comes in! I proceed to curl the front part of my hair, but tucker out and can't finish the back. No worries - that part is on the pillow and no one can see it! After I finished curling the front and sides, I put some make up on, and proceed to begin the waiting game. Tim comes early at like 6:30am, and we wait together. The doctor comes in around 8:30 and looks at everything and says he would like to send me home but he doesn't like how much it is still draining around the opening of my JP drain (yeah, me neither - the nurses are still having to change the dressing like every 2 hours). He finally gets an idea I wish someone had thought of days ago. He gets a urostomy bag, pokes a hole in it, threads the JP drain through the hole, secures the urostomy bag to my body, and voila, now it can drain in the bag and I can empty it just like I am emptying my bag of urine! Tada! Let's go home. So we wait for the paperwork and sign offs. I turn on the Thanksgiving Day parade at 9am while we wait. 10am comes, and we're still waiting, and then something dawns on me and I look over at Tim and declare - I have no clothes to go home in!! Yikes! So he grabs a bunch of stuff from the room that all needs to come home including several flower arrangements, and beelines it home and picks up a dress I had told him I wanted to wear home from the hospital and drives back to the hospital. Now it's like 11am and we're still waiting. I go ahead and get dressed, and realize even this dress is really not going to work in the near future, but it'll have to do to get me home. I put my sweater on over it and somewhat cover all the bulges around my belly. About a month earlier I had met with a lady who had this procedure done a year ago, and she said I would probably need to change my wardrobe. I remember thinking, really? Nah, it probably won't be as drastic as that! Hmmm - maybe I should have paid more attention to what she was telling me!
Well, back in real time, we are still waiting. It's noon now and the parade is over. My nurse is trying to discharge I think 4 patients at once, so she's scurrying around like crazy. She's telling me I really can't go home until I have my Home Health nurse appointment, so she was trying to get that established but was having a hard time since it was Thanksgiving day. I told her I would follow up when I got home. My daughter and oldest son show up to help us carry stuff, and I said I wanted to take a walk down the hallway. So we walk down to the elevators and I sit down in a chair. My nurse finally brings the paperwork I need to sign at around 12:30pm. Finally! She walks me through everything and has me sign everything and then calls for a transport. We wait for a transport for about 10 minutes (by now it's after 1pm) and then I look at Tim and say, "Let's go!" He agrees so we wave good-bye to our nurse down at the nurse's station and hop on the elevator! Free at last, free at last, Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last!! The kids wait on a bench with me while Tim goes and gets the car. He pulls up, they help me in, and then leave for my daughter's vehicle with more of my stuff that needed to come home. We arrived home at 1:34pm, and I remember feeling so incredibly thankful to be walking into our home on that particular Thanksgiving day! I wanted to be out in the living room with everyone so I rested on the couch, dozing off and on. We had a dear friend from church who had already volunteered to make our family a Thanksgiving dinner (while she was also making one for her family and out of town family guests), so at 4pm her husband and daughter showed up bringing dish upon dish into our home. They brought an organic turkey, and mashed potatoes and gravy and a sweet potato casserole and crescent roles and 2 different desserts and home made cranberry sauce and probably more that I'm forgetting - it was unbelievable! Our 4 kids, my husband, and myself sat down to the most thankful of all Thanksgivings for me! This was my first meal since Tuesday the week before (over 8 days) and while my taste buds were definitely a little messed up, food never tasted so good! Another thing I have taken for granted every day!
Well, back in real time, we are still waiting. It's noon now and the parade is over. My nurse is trying to discharge I think 4 patients at once, so she's scurrying around like crazy. She's telling me I really can't go home until I have my Home Health nurse appointment, so she was trying to get that established but was having a hard time since it was Thanksgiving day. I told her I would follow up when I got home. My daughter and oldest son show up to help us carry stuff, and I said I wanted to take a walk down the hallway. So we walk down to the elevators and I sit down in a chair. My nurse finally brings the paperwork I need to sign at around 12:30pm. Finally! She walks me through everything and has me sign everything and then calls for a transport. We wait for a transport for about 10 minutes (by now it's after 1pm) and then I look at Tim and say, "Let's go!" He agrees so we wave good-bye to our nurse down at the nurse's station and hop on the elevator! Free at last, free at last, Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last!! The kids wait on a bench with me while Tim goes and gets the car. He pulls up, they help me in, and then leave for my daughter's vehicle with more of my stuff that needed to come home. We arrived home at 1:34pm, and I remember feeling so incredibly thankful to be walking into our home on that particular Thanksgiving day! I wanted to be out in the living room with everyone so I rested on the couch, dozing off and on. We had a dear friend from church who had already volunteered to make our family a Thanksgiving dinner (while she was also making one for her family and out of town family guests), so at 4pm her husband and daughter showed up bringing dish upon dish into our home. They brought an organic turkey, and mashed potatoes and gravy and a sweet potato casserole and crescent roles and 2 different desserts and home made cranberry sauce and probably more that I'm forgetting - it was unbelievable! Our 4 kids, my husband, and myself sat down to the most thankful of all Thanksgivings for me! This was my first meal since Tuesday the week before (over 8 days) and while my taste buds were definitely a little messed up, food never tasted so good! Another thing I have taken for granted every day!
RSS Feed
