It's a little before 8 PM. We are back home at Auntie Violet and I am trying very hard to stay awake long enough to write a note. After a night in the hospital connected to IVs and getting started on both a type of injectable heparin and oral coumadin, the doctor decided this morning that the therapy could continue just as well on an outpatient basis.
Note I did not say "a night of rest!" I was just getting settled for sleep about ten PM when there began incredible lightning and thunder storm outside my window. In the midst of the storm, I get a roommate. It took a good hour for the nursing staff to get her settled and her history etc. taken. We barely got the lights off and settled down again when her IV started acting up and they had to restart it. The mother of the IV nurse had obviously never talked to her daughter about "using an indoor voice" -- especially in the middle of the night! Or the inadvisability of showing a patient late at night all the different levels of lighting possible in the room and leaving lights at the brightest level when you leave the room...
So now it's two AM and here comes the Head Resident doctor. One of the new residents (they just started last Sunday) had taken my history and physical earlier in the evening and she was following up on it. She was apologetic about coming so late, but said she had been tied up in the ER all evening. By the time she did her own physical exam and asked a bunch of questions about our wandering life style, it was another hour later. Since I'm now wide awake it's time for a trip to the bathroom pushing the IV pump on its pole ahead of me. Then of course, my roomie needs to take a trip as well; which causes her IV pump to start beeping.
Back to bed, finally dozing off; in comes the RN; says the Chief Resident looked at earlier lab results and wants me to take some oral potassium; says she'll be back in two hours with a second dose... Nurse Aide comes in to take vital signs; roomie's IV beeps every time she moves or turns over. 4 AM: Lab tech comes in to draw blood for AM labs, makes three trips in and out the door for more supplies while drawing roomie's blood -- only has to take one trip for something missing when he does mine! (Of course, leaves lights on during all of trips back and forth...) Starts to get light outside.
And so the night went! Breakfast trays come at 8 AM. Would you believe that after vital signs at 6:30, not another soul comes into room until the dietary aide arrives?! Would have been a nice hour and one-half of sleep, but both Sister Sherry and Forry call to see how things are going!
8:30: The Group Health doctor tells me I can be discharged and give myself the necessary injections at home; RN becomes very relieved when I tell her it's okay -- in another life I had been a nurse. (She'd been trying to figure how how she's going to teach me how to give myself the shots when I have only one more scheduled dose before I leave the hospital. The drug uses a special pre-loaded syringe with automatic needle retraction -- they don't sell the empty syringes and the drug is way too expensive to waste any of it practicing on an orange...)
11 AM: Paperwork in hand, the runner gives me a ride in a wheelchair down to the front door; Forry pulls up in the Toad and we are off to the pharmacy and then to home!
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