What Next?

I wish I could say our homecoming was full of jubilation and joy, but we got a huge kick in the butt as we exited the hospital yesterday which has thrown us both for a loop. We're not sure exactly what to make of it, except that neither of us have stopped washing our hands since we got home.

The plastic surgeon, Dr. Turner (whom we both really liked a lot) called right before we left to tell us that the culture he took of Parker's wound on his abdomen cultured MRSA.

We don't really know how alarmed to be, but for people who are not usually in a clinical setting, it is really, really scary. The last time we had to wound care people at the outpatient place (before the skin graft surgery, last week), I saw two little bumps that looked like pimples on the top part of the wound. I asked the nurse about them and she said she would have the doctor look. The doctor looked (this is a doctor we have only seen twice, not one of our regular docs, and not one from Seton), and both Parker and I remember how she backed out of the room to answer our question, but she never told us anything about what it might be!

So yeah, I'm pretty upset about that. Either she didn't want to bother to look closely enough, or she didn't want to "get involved" since she knew it was out last time at the outpatient place, but for whatever reason she let us go about our merry way without alerting us to the problem.

I'm pretty sure I will be calling her today. That is simply wrong. It isn't her fault that he has MSRA, I know that. But shouldn't she have told us so we could have alerted the hospital? Our doctor's office? The surgeon?

Or how about just so we would know and get a head start on the treatment????

On a lighter note, here are some more pictures of the people who helped us during our lengthy stays at Seton. All the people on this site made a huge difference in the success of our lengthy hospital stay, and all of them deserve special thanks!

At the top with Parker is the last nurse we had, Bronwyn. Her sense of humor kept us smiling on an otherwise tense day.

To the left is Kim, the friendliest CA ever, who never seemed to have a bad day, never got flustered or aggitated, and always had a pleasant smile and greeting for me when I arrived in the morning. Kim runs the desk on the IMC floor.

This is Laurie, our Case Manager, who used her east coast attitude to make things happen for us with the insurance company when they weren't being cooperative. She really worked her butt off for us (our insurance company wasn't always very cooperative to deal with) and we appreciate all her efforts more than she can imagine. Laurie grew up right near Bay Head, so we had a common bond from the start.

And this is Stacy. She was our nurse our very first day on IMC way back in the beginning of April, then she was our nurse the first day back on IMC when Parker came out of ICU. She was also his last night nurse the other night, right before we left. Thanks for the tour, Stacy!