The C Word – A New Battle Day 19 - Discharge day

Oh my gosh what a very long, long day!  I arrived at the hospital at 6:30 AM and Dr. B was already there pulling staples and finishing up his exam.  Went over the meds George would need for discharge and he was on his way to write all the orders.  All we needed to do was wait for the discharge person to get to the office at 9AM and start processing.  I went to her office at 9:30 to see how she was doing with his papers and she said, “Oh, is he going home today?”  Duh!  I had spoken to her last Thursday in order to get things started in the way of approvals.  She knew we would be going home with a feeding tube and would need a home health nurse.  She just needed to find out preferred providers for that.  But she hadn’t followed through!  By 11:00 she had the vendor for the IV and feeding tube supplies and had located a nursing agency but had not heard from them.  It wasn’t until after 1PM when she finally did and they could not provide anyone until tomorrow so, “I guess you’ll go home tomorrow morning” she says.  NO WAY!!!  After some negotiations and figuring out what we could get away with, we determined that we would forgo the nighttime tube feeding tonight and would stay in the hospital until 6PM to receive the last of the antibiotics that would be required for the day and can start with the at-home dosages when the nurse arrives in the morning.  I then spent the afternoon running around to a couple of different pharmacies to get the medications and supplies that would be needed before returning to pick up George.

The nurses were very good about showing me how to administer the meds via the feeding tube that I will be doing tonight.  I am sure it will be awkward at first but between the two of us we will figure it out. 

We were very emotional when saying good bye to some of the staff.  After nearly 3 weeks some of them were like family to us.  We’d had some good conversations, both serious and funny, with a number of them.  I also brought treats in at various times for them to share.  Most of them worked hard to make us comfortable and tried to respond in as reasonable amount of time as was possible. 

We had some great RN”s:  Hardeep (we had her for probably 1/3 of the time, Akash (our favorite male staff), Jennifer, Claudia, Diana 1 & 2, Heidi, Amy, Janice, Mai, Mercy to name a few
Wonderful CNA”s Ana (had her quite often as well), Ernanette, Maria, Mark, Nanny, Kevin, Kulwant and Satinder
Housekeeping: Reyna – such a sweet lady
Nursing interns Jennifer, Chelsea and Christine

When we arrived home George sat in his chair and just grinned!  So good to be home.  He has control of his recliner, better TV selections, and is as comfortable as he can be in spite of tubes and drains everywhere!  Now I have to sit down and figure out my schedule of flushing, feeding, medicating, etc. 

The nurse will be here at 9AM tomorrow and show me the IV things I need to do.  She’ll need to come back on Wed. for lab draw and we see Dr. Majumder on Thursday for our first follow up.  Something tells me I am going to need to keep very focused for a bit!!