Home Is Where the Real Couch Is

5:30 PM   The couch at Hackerman was unexplainably hard and weird.  We are home now, and we have already had naps on the excellent couches in our livingroom. We have to remember to do the "push IV" thing once every eight hours or so for the next nine days.  My hands will never have been so clean. I watched the whole video on how to do this and the main job is to have everything so clean that nothing gets into that line. Lots of alcohol swab action between every step -- saline, antibiotic, saline.  The "push" part is that it is supposed to take 5 minutes to get 20 ml into the line. That's Jon's job, to sit there with the clock and push the right amount in at the right rate. I keep rubbing my nose by accident and then I have to wash my hands again.

I did not put my name on the board -- that is Jon's last nurse's real name. When we both signed the discharge sheet, she told me that she almost said, "no, you are supposed to sign your name, not mine" -- it surprised her to see someone else signing the same name that she has. She pronounces her name correctly too.

While we are home, he is supposed to resume normal activities. We never really were explicit about what normal activities are, but we know that he will need to be very careful about keeping that line out of trouble and also about not collecting up any more dreaded virus, fungus or bacteria.

Jon has an appointment with Dr. Imus on Monday, April 4. I hope that we can keep him safe and healthy until then.  

As I said this morning, take a break from following this slow-moving train. I will resume reporting as soon as there is anything to report, hopefully on that Monday.  We welcome all texts and emails and we thank you for all the nice messages of support and concern. It is so nice to know you are thinking of us.

We were only there for 15 days, but our stuff multiplied by at least twice. We still got out of there with only two carts, and one of them was mostly the piano. We figure we won't even need to unpack most of this -- we thought we would be eating this food and wearing these clothes for another few weeks, why would we need to switch it out?



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