Wife Goes Through The Looking Glass (Part Three) - A de-I Family Health Adventure

It is Saturday. I make my way back to the hospital. Things are pretty much status quo. Wife said she actually got some reasonable sleep. She's eating her salt free fried eggs without much gusto. I joke that I should have sneaked in some salt. But she's adamant. Whatever it takes to get out of the hospital she will do. 

I am figuring out that the hospital staff is actually pretty happy if you, the patient's relative, will do a lot of the mundane tasks. Unplug the monitoring device so it is on battery and she can go to the toilet or take a walk? Sure. You do it. Go get tea, coffee, crackers, etc from their 'nutrition' room. Sure. Be the one to walk her around. Sure.

So I get Wife some tea and I get some coffee. Her room mate is off for dialysis so we are alone in the room. It is a waiting game. I made myself a sandwich so I could eat when she got her meal. Compared to Friday morning when there was so much activity, there is a lack of interaction with the hospital staff at all in the morning. 

Around midday, we see both doctors (not at the same time). Both confirm that Wife is responding well to the anticoagulant. The vascular surgeon says Wife's vital signs are pretty amazing considering what she has gone through . (Go Wife and her regime to take care of herself!). They say they are ready to release her and put her on an oral anticoagulant. All they need is one more blood test to confirm the drugs are working as they should.

Now again we descend into the hospital waiting game. When are the blood people going to come? We kill time by my researching the two likely drugs she will be given, their side effects, and costs. The side effect information is promising. Not many all things considered. The price information? Not so good. This shit is expensive. Fortunately the doctors have told Wife she should only be on them for three to six months.

It is late afternoon. Will these blood people ever come? And if they come really late, will they be letting Wife discharge? And if the discharge time gets past 9pm, is that the best thing for Wife and I? Wife and I go for another of her walks around the floor. It makes a nice loop. We are doing three loops. Wife is getting very good at driving her pole around the various obstacles we encounter.

Wait!

We are coming to a room where it looks like the 'blood sample people' are outside doing their thing. We talk to them. Yes, they are in fact the 'blood sample people' (makes them sound like they are some kind of dark aliens). And they confirm, Wife is on the list. Great. They are on the floor and not all that far from her room. We finish our laps and head back to the room feeling upbeat that this last hurdle will be jumped.

Accept they don't come. Hours go by. It is around 5pm. Wife and I debate. If I stay, I am getting more anxious. And knowing Murphy's Law they will not come. BUT, if I go, they are sure to come and I will have to turn right around and come back. We make the decision for me to go home. I am grabbing something to eat. I won't drink any wine because I might have to run back to the hospital. Sure enough. Within 30 minutes of my leaving the 'blood sample people' show up. Not terribly long after that, the results are given to the doctors and they give the green light to discharge Wife. She tells me to come on and pick her up. She's feeling pretty upbeat.

But there is one last delay (in my hospital experience, this is almost a given). There is no one around who can actually produce (print out) the discharge instructions and give them to Wife. So I have to go back up to her room and we wait another 30 minutes until finally a person arrives, gives us our instructions, and Wife is officially released and wheeled down so I can take her home. 

We get home. She's beat but happy to be in her own house and bed. After she crashes, I have a drink and give a multitude of thanks that we've managed to dodge a real bullet. From the time Wife had her appointment with her primary care physician on Thursday to getting her home has been roughly 56 hours. It seems a lot longer. A business network friend of mine told me today at lunch his wife has a serious form of cancer. I know things could be a lot worse. I am grateful we've been able to get through this as easily (relatively speaking) as we have,