Rejuvenated?? Notsomuch!

“It’s been a LOOOOONNNNNNGGGGGG day!”  Those are Nancy’s words but this is Amy typing once again.

Nancy had a crazy morning…..  Laura checked in; Dr. Spiegel’s resident, Dr McKnight checked in; Jennifer the PA checked in; then all three of the plastic surgery team (Dr. Spiegel, Jennifer and Dr. McKnight) popped in again. Trevor got here bearing gifts: peanut butter and toast–the only thing that has seemed appetizing and would you believe they don’t have that in the hospital cafeteria?  Christie came by, too.

But wait, before she had her IV discontinued and got that “Take a Shower. Take a Hike” show on the road, she still had one last infusion of the IV antibiotic, Vancomycin. That took 2 hours so Nancy was able to sit in the chair and enjoy the smoothie that Christie brought.  Mr. Morphine Pump and the rest of his crew are yet again dust in the wind. Nancy is free of anything that follows her on a pole.  She does have 6 drains and 2 doppler wires, plus her central line access port, so she’s still got a little gear.

It was nearly 11 before there was serious movement to the shower.  Well, all I have good to say about that shower is that Nancy is clean.  One word I could use to describe how Nancy tolerated the event was that she was speechless.  So, suffice it to say that the stomach pain reached out and grabbed hold of her with a lot of help from her shower assistant. It took a while but she was able to settle down from that episode (thank you, Ativan) and caught her breath. We then enticed her with a hummus sandwich from the cafeteria downstairs.  She wolfed that sandwich down and then had a bit of a siesta.  Thank Goodness!  By that time she had recovered enough to find her voice and exclaim, “That’s not happening again!  I’m clean enough!” Nancy had a little more to say about the shower, not so much the shower itself, but the way she felt manhandled by one of the helpers. Let’s just say it was rough going and it took a while for her to recover.

Nancy & I rested for some of the afternoon while Trevor took care of some work on his laptop.

Her infectious disease doctor also showed up and was happy to report that all her lab cultures have so far showed nothing…..but they will keep an eye on them for quite some time since it was such a slow growing bacterium.

So, Nancy has at this point taken 2 hikes and her one and ONLY shower and has had 2 sessions of chair time today.  She is moving well, although a bit stiff and hunched over.  The name Quasimodo does come to mind.   She is sitting in the chair waiting on her dinner that Trevor is going downstairs to fetch. After she eats she will settle in for the night.  She has commented that she can’t believe she’s napping so much, but GOOD NIGHT she hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in 3 days! She’ll end her evening with a dispensing of Norco, Ativan, Ambien and Flexeril. Not all at the same time, mind you–a staggered dispensing, but I think she’ll be able to sleep better tonight with this drug regimen and also since her “flap checks” (that’s what the hospital crew calls them) are now every 2 hours.

More updates in the morning.

Oh, the doctors will assess discharge in the morning with Nancy’s input and go from there.  I think the thought is that she wants to see how she feels in the morning.