karenulijohn

I forgot to explain why Harvey did not come home as planned on Saturday.  Dawn and Claire and I arrived at the hospital at 10:30AM expecting to take him home.  He was a little subdued and said he had to have a transfusion of two units of blood and then he could go home.  However, they had to cross match him again because the previous cross match had “expired.”  The blood would then have to be ordered and irradiated because he is a cancer patient.  This process would probably take several hours.  Each unit of blood is transfused over a period of three hours.  The nurses would then observe him for an hour or so looking for any negative reaction.  The PICC line could then be removed, but he would have to wait a half an hour holding pressure on the arm.  I started adding up all of this time and realized that we would not be leaving the hospital until around midnight.  I just said “NO!”  I couldn’t imagine us going through what we did today, at midnight or later on Saturday.  It would have been a terrible disaster.  Fortunately, Dawn and Claire backed me up, as did the nurse, Antoinette.  Harvey was outnumbered.  He was terribly disappointed, almost to the point of tears.  I might have relented except for Dawn playing “bad cop.”  Thank goodness she is willing to take on the big guy.  Fortunately, he now sees the wisdom of our decision and is most grateful.  It definitely worked out for the best.

We arrived home today at around 1:00 PM.  Before leaving the hospital, we were given all kinds of instructions and five prescriptions to be filled.  The PICC line was removed and Harvey was able to have a shower and dress in real clothes for the first time in nine days.  As we left the hospital, I stopped at Starbucks for a cup of tea and passion tea for Harvey, after which I gassed up the van.  One of the most important instructions was to make sure he has protein for each meal.  The RDA for protein is greater than or equal to 56g per day.  We hit the target today with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Ensure ice cream shake, two scrambled eggs and macaroni and cheese.  I got him settled and headed to CVS to pick up the prescriptions and was told by a very snippy young lady that they were not ready and that they had only just received them (which, by the way, was not true).  This was around 1:30 PM and he was due to have a dose of antibiotic at 2:00 PM.  I finally got the medications at 3:00 PM.  I’m not particularly happy with CVS.  I was grateful to our friends the Smiths and Mary Ann Barker for coming over to visit so that I was able to run these errands.  I am also grateful to the Coopers for lending us their walker.  The hospital decided that Harvey was quite steady walking and would not need a walker.  I was not so confident and decided to take up the Cooper’s offer.  I’m so glad that I did.  We might have been back at the emergency already had it not been for the walker.

In addition, the hospital forgot about was how difficult it is to rise from a low toilet when you haven’t been mobile for several weeks.  It became clear that we needed to solve this problem ASAP or we would both be injured.  We drove to Walgreens and I was able to find a raised toilet seat and safety rails.  I was pretty proud of myself until it became clear that I was going to have to install the rails.  Along with my nursing, electrical work, refrigerator moving, et al, I have now become an apprentice handy woman complete with channel lock pliers and battery operated screwdriver.  At least that has freed me from being a weight lifter.

Our next hurdle is getting in and out of bed.  Not only is our bed very high, but we don’t have safety rails attached, so there is nothing to hold onto.  The physical therapist did give us some tips on how to accomplish this, so we are going to practice a few times.  I have a feeling that this may be a fairly sleepless night for me.  Thankfully, a home nurse and home physical therapist have been assigned to Harvey.  They will be contacting us within 24-48 hours.  We won’t be going out much except for some short car trips to “blow the stink off,” as my father used to say.  Despite the hurdles, I’m glad to have him home and looking so well.  I just hope we can keep him moving in the right direction.