Update #180

Well, we finally made it home just before 11:00 last night. Once the doctors told us that we were headed home, it almost seemed like they were pushing us out the door - gathering discharge paperwork, encouraging us to pack up, even seeming slightly frustrated when Dave said he wanted to take a shower (the first he was allowed since surgery because of the epidural). In the midst of the chaos, however, Dave started bleeding from one of his incisions, which caused Dr. Muskat and his partners to order blood work to make sure that there was no sign of infection or other problem.

Now, don't get me wrong - we appreciated the caution and concern, and we would always rather be absolutely certain that Dave is as healthy as possible before leaving the hospital. That being said, three hours after Dave stared bleeding, the lab finally sent someone to draw blood. And three hours after that, around 8:00 last night, we were still waiting for results. We paged Dave's nurse to see if she could check with the lab, and two minutes later, the lab tech walked back into our room. Somehow, the lab managed to lose the first blood draw, and they needed another sample. As I mentioned before, Dave's veins are impossible for needles to find, and sure enough, the tech and three nurses (including a nurse paged from the burn unit who can find veins through charred skin) each tried unsuccessfully to find a new vein for the sample.

At that point, we were starting to believe that we would not being going home - not that big of a deal except for the fact that we had already sent most of our stuff back to the house with Dave's parents and had already cancelled our dogsitter for the night. We asked the nurse to see if Dr. Muskat and his partners would let us go home then head to a local lab in the morning to get another sample; wonder of all wonders, the lab suddenly found the original blood sample again. Sometime just before 10:00 p.m., the lab work came back fine, and we were finally discharged.

End of story, right? Not quite. Earlier in the afternoon, I had called our normal pharmacy to confirm that they had Oxycodone - Dave's new oral pain med to replace the dilaudid and the epidural - in stock since we have had problems getting it before. As it got later and later while we waited at the hospital, I called a 24 hour pharmacy to ask the same question since ours had already closed. Both locations confirmed that getting Oxy would not be a problem. After dropping Dave at home around 11:00 p.m., I headed to the 24 hour pharmacy to fill his prescriptions and quickly found out that not only did they not have the normal dose of Oxy pills in stock (5 milligram pills); the pill that the doctors had precribed (and the pharmacy assured me they had), 20 milligrams, does not even exist. And, because Oxy is a narcotic, the pharmacist couldn't substitute anything in the place of the pill without a new written prescription from Dave's doctor.

The pharmacist called UC, where all of Dave's doctors were in the midst of a trauma, to find out alternatives to get us through the night, while I headed home to wait for an answer. Finally, at 12:30 a.m., the pharmacy called to say that the doctor had allowed her to switch from Oxy in pill form to Oxy in liquid form, of which she had enough to get us through three days. Back to the pharmacy, then home just in time to give Dave his next dose of pain meds at 1:00 a.m. Dave and I both slept till noon today (aside from two more doses of Oxy at 5:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m.), and now we too are navigating the art form that is pain control. Too much Oxy means dizziness and sleeping; too little, and we get behind on controlling Dave's pain, which will almost certainly end us up back in the hospital.

On the positive side of this whole charade, we are home, and it is wonderful. Dave's sleeping in the hospital bed again for a while, but fortunately for him, I am the only person he has to worry about waking him up, which I won't do aside from pain meds. And I am back sleeping in our bed instead of a recliner, so happy that on the whole, Dave is recovering well and we are once step closer to the end of this story.

Thanks again for praying and for continuing to partcipate in this saga with us. We are getting close to the end, and we would not have made it this far without all of you and your support. For those of you outside of Cincinnati, keep praying as we walk through recovery. And for anyone around town, we're homebound for a while (the car's seatbelt sits right along one of Dave's incisions) but always up for visitors - well, except for tonight. Tonight, we are eating the Outback take-out that Sarah dropped off for dinner last night, then heading to bed to sleep off the rest of the hospital hangover. More soon...