Life Beyond

The past 24 hours have been exhausting, yet the end result is that Dan is resting and recovering outside of the hospital. Finally.

The doctors did their part yesterday by changing the wound vac early in the morning and writing up all of the discharge orders before noon. The nurses did their part by gathering up extra supplies and teaching us what we need to know. The case manager did her part by setting up home health and ordering Dan's IV meds for home use. I did my part by packing up the room and getting our stuff ready. Jamie did her part by driving to the hospital and getting our stuff in the car. Dan did his part by simply being ready to go.

With everyone doing their part, how did we get home so late? The meds we had to take to Lodi got delivered an hour late and the transporter found other things to occupy his time. Then, when finally in the car and driving, we got caught in terrible traffic. I mean terrible.

So, around 8 o'clock, we finally pulled onto Vienna Drive. It must have felt weird for Dan to be somewhere new for the first time in a month. Good weird.

We then proceeded to unload all of our supplies while waiting for Dan's home health nurse to arrive. Toni arrived at 10pm to begin the TPN and teach us how to use the new pump. The pump then proceeded not to work. Dan finally got TPN started at 11pm.

What next? We went to bed--together for the first time in a month! Expecting to have a lovely night of sleep compared to the hospital, we quickly discovered that medical equipment often refuses to cooperate and things do not go as planned. Dan's wound vac detected a leak in the suction seal, so it alarmed every 5 minutes or so unless we were holding the suction portion down. The "tug-boat" sound also proceeded to get louder.

Our night looked like this: bed at midnight, blood sugar check at 2 (he needed insulin but we didn't have a sliding scale), wound vac alarm at 3 (we tried repositioning first), wound vac alarm at 4 (the next hour was spent on the phone with the home health agency as I tried to fix the seal), wound vac alarm at 5:30, blood sugar check at 7, wound vac alarm at 7:30, medication at 8, dozing until 9:30 when home health agency called, new nurse showed up at 11 to fix wound vac...quiet for the first time in 12 hours. With all this waking up, we should have a baby around!

All that being said, it is nice to be home. We could sleep at least close together, lounge in our pjs, visit with friends and set our own schedule. As of now, I have gotten half of my homework done while Dan is catching up on some sleep. Though, it's med time, so I better wake him up soon.

Being a home health "nurse" will be interesting, as I'm doing things I'm used to just in different ways. TPN at night will be the biggest production, so I hope I do that appropriately tonight (first time without the nurse). Octreotide IVP every eight hours, blood sugar checks every 6 hours (Dan does these), empty JPs 2-3 times a day, etc. Thankfully, Dan's mom will step in to help Dan out when I go back to school. We can obviously handle being nurses, but it sure will be nice to go back to being "mom" and "wife"!

We are so thankful for all the support we have and that God has brought Dan this far. Please continue to pray for good news and confidence at Monday's doctor appointment.

Prayer Requests:
* Drying up of the drains (they've been changing colors a lot lately and not decreasing much, so this is a huge prayer)
* Continued wound healing
* No more problems with the IV pump or wound vac
* Sleep-filled nights
* Ability for Dan to go home to La Mirada very soon
* God's glory to be visible in this trial
* Focus so I can be a "nurse" and a student

Praise:
* Dan's out of the hospital!
* Great home health nurses
* Insurance coverage
* Flexible teachers at Biola
* God's grace is new every morning