Have you ever slept in someone else's bed for 10 days and nights? If so you know how happy Doug was to sleep in his own bed in his own room with no one coming in to wake him up to ask how he feels and to take his "vital" signs to see if he is still alive. Who thought that idea up anyway?
Kevin and I went to the hospital around 8 p.m. to gather up Doug and his personal belongings and to wait until the discharge nurse put together all the paper work. The time between when one knows one is going to be able to go home and when one is actually discharged gives another meaning to the word patient. Doug knew yesterday morning that he was going to be able to go home that day. He was escorted to our car by the hospital staff at 8:45 last night.
Kevin took his dad home to settle in and I went to the pharmacy to get the 2 new prescriptions filled.
All Friday, in preparation for Doug's arrival, I had scrubbed, dusted, vacuumed rugs, bleached sinks, wiped down door knobs with Clorox wipes, disinfected counters, and felt a lot like Bridgette!! By 11:00 p.m. I had distributed his new medications and tucked him in for a night of uninterrupted sleep.
This morning the phone rang. It was a nurse from the home health agency that has been assigned to help. It was a male voice who indicated that he had been asked to come to visit us today to admit Doug into the program and do the initial evaluation. I was thrilled it was a male nurse. There is just something about man-to-man communication that I cannot provide!!!
He arrived in the afternoon as planned, paper work and computer in hand. Would you believe he is both an R.N. and a D.C. as in Registered Nurse and Doctor of Chiropractic medicine? Talk about blessings. He sees patients in his office as a D.C. week days and works part-time for the home health agency as an R.N. He was on-call this weekend and told us he will be Doug's case manager.
He ordered a physical therapy consult from their agency as well which will help Doug get back on his feet. It was music to my ears to hear one of the goals of home health is to provide services in our home that will prevent Doug from having to return to the emergency room or to sleep in someone else's bed at a hospital anytime soon.
~Carole
PS The Christmas tree is now a New Year tree. It sits on the window seat in our bedroom to remind Doug of the reason he needs to do what his Oncologist/Hematologist, his R.N./D.C., P.T.--and wife (Mrs./M.A.)-- tells him to keep him from having to return to the hospital in 2008!!!
