Home from the hosptial

Keith is home from the hospital and doing quite well.

Friday the doctor told us that Keith would be spending the weekend in the hospital. Keith and I decided that it would be best for me to head home and spend some time with the kids over the weekend, since up until this point, the nursing staff had been fantastic. Friday night I drove home and arrived home just in time for bedtime hugs and kisses.

Saturday morning I called Keith to check on him (close to around lunchtime). Keith was mad because his nurse floated to his floor from another unit and had a really bad attitude, and the doctor (who usually rounds before 7am) had not seen him yet. I called up to the floor to talk to the nurse and we just seemed to not communicate well. Keith felt like he wasn't getting good care from his nurse and asked me to drive back over later in the day.

Saturday after lunch, the kids were just pick, pick, picking on each other relentlessly. I know it is their way of getting my attention, since my head is in the clouds thinking about Keith and the house closing and wrapping up stuff for the new school year, and the other millions of things I feel like I need to be doing right now. I just couldn't take anymore of the bickering, so I made everyone take a nap. Since they are all three still in the same room and I knew that there would be partying going on, I took my pillow and blanket and settled in for a nap on their floor after giving them all the stink-eye and daring them to make any noise. It was so nice to nap. I slept for nearly 2 1/2 hours. After naps, we had a small dinner and went to Family Bible Adventure Night at the church. Megan was in a bit of a foul mood at the beginning, but she warmed up quickly. After I dropped the kids back off at the house, packed a bag and left for my 2 hour drive sometime around 9pm.

I arrived to find Keith bright eyed. He had since gotten a new very attention-seeking roommate. This guy lived on the nurse call bell, and was just a rude person in general. So, since it was 11pm and I was totally breaking the visiting hours rules, Keith and I walked down to the family waiting room and watched Saturday Night Live on the tv, until I got too tired to keep my eyes open, then I left to go back to the apartment to sleep.

Sunday, we had a different nurse (yippee!) and she was on top of things. I've never been on this side of the bed before, and let me tell you, when someone confident with a plan walks in the room, it really starts the day off right. She walked in and listed the things that needed to happen today (labs coming back, IV fluids changed, diet progress, etc). I liked her immediately. By around noon, I went to the desk to find out if it was the norm for patients to not be seen on the weekend. Turns out the rounding doc came to the floor sometime Saturday, but because Keith was walking the halls (which he was ordered to do in order to have his Lovenox blood thinning shot in his belly discontinued), the doc wrote a one-line note that patient was not seen because patient was not in room. The nurse paged the doc to at least get some of the orders changed, and I spoke with him to let him know that I expect him to come in and talk with us about what is going on. The bottom line was that I realize that time is tight for all of us, and if he could give me an idea of when he'll be at the floor, or at least page us to come back to the room, that would be great. I might have been a little too stern, but certainly not disrespectful. He came to the floor less than an hour later and spent about 20 minutes studying the chart and a decent amount of time in the room assessing Keith and talking to us. The nurses wanted to know how I managed to get him to the floor and if I'd like a job with them.

The rest of Sunday was rather uneventful. The manipulative roommate was unbearable, so Keith and I took up residence in the Family Resource Room, which was a quiet little room used for private family meetings with the social work team during the week. We read the Sunday paper and clipped coupons, napped and chatted in between the pain meds, antibiotics and vital signs.

Monday morning, our fantastic surgeon from last week was back from his weekend off. He had the discharge orders written before 7am. Jeff, our super-nurse of the day, had us out of the hospital by 9:30am. Then it was time to head over to the base.

At the Coast Guard base, we went into medical to follow-up with the Captain there. She said she just knew that Keith was sicker than he looked. She was great to talk with, and we follow up with her in 2 weeks. She wants Keith home on convalescent leave for 2 weeks. She is also going to wrestle the insurance company to allow Keith to follow up one more time with the surgeon that we liked (appointment in 2 weeks as well), and then help us to figure out how to make the surgery happen closer to Orlando. The end result is that Keith will have to have the sick part of the colon removed in about 4-6 weeks. For now, he continues on two antibiotics and lots of rest.