Red Bird

There's nothing like a new mattress pad, new sheets, comforter, pillows and a good book to make for a good nights sleep. And what a difference that can make on the outlook of a brand new day.

We are hopeful this morning that the MRSA news will be only another little bump in the road, not cause for backtracking. We are taking extra precautions ~ I have never washed my hands so much in my life ~ to be safe, and will wait for more information from Dr. Turner when we go to see him in his office tomorrow.

This morning I woke Parker up to give him his medicine early because he can't take the doxycycline within 4 hours of one of his other medications. I made him sit up on the edge of the bed for half an hour (as per the NIH web site recommendations so it doesn't stick in his esophagus and cause him to throw up like it did yesterday) before going back to sleep. I felt like Nurse Ratchett.

Anyway, while he was sitting up waiting, we noticed a red bird outside his window, jumping around in a bush and landing on the window sill. I told him it was Dovie, his Dad's mother who passed away about 12 years ago. She loved red birds, and the day she died a red bird came to the window and sat there with her until she passed. Since then we have always thought of her when we had cardinals around. Dovie was definitely one of God's most precious angels when she was alive. I've never known anyone like her.

After Parker got himself moved to the living room, the red bird appeared at that window, too, dancing around in a different bush outside, looking at us through the window. A sense of calm came over me and I knew it was Dovie.

She's here to tell you everything will be okay, Parker. She wants you to know. You're going to be okay.

Others can call me crazy, but I knew it like I know when someone is about to call me even before the phone rings. There are some things you just know.

I took this picture when I drove out to Buda not too long ago. This little pond is on the old dairy farm where John and I lived. I used to ride my horse up the big hill in the background, with Little Bit and Missy following me. I just think the picture is so funny, the cows are so funny. Sort of like, Great minds think alike.

P.S. FedEx just banged on the door and made me jump. A gift card to Central Market just arrive from someone who has turned out to be a really good friend. It's funny how things like true friendship weed themselves out during a time like this. Thank you Crystal! Just in the nick of time, too! SO appreciated!

At The End Of The Day

What a difficult day. We both feel like we were kicked in the ass as we exited the hospital yesterday with the whole MRSA thing. I'm trying not to get hysterical, but all day I kept having memories of Parker when he was in septic shock with the VRE. I cried a lot today. Hopefully more in private than in front of Parker.

He had quite an emotional day himself. He had his own set of memories coming to him, thoughts of waking up in the ICU, remembering the night he couldn't get to his phone to call the ambulance, looking at his swollen stomach with the retention sutures in it and wondering how he was ever going to get through the pain he was in, begging for water and only getting the green lollipop sponge things to rinse out his mouth..... All these thoughts made him very emotional.

Thank God for Dustin. I was going to go get new mattress stuff and sheets etc. for Parker because he's had so much trouble sleeping on his old mattress since he was in the hospital. He woke up this morning in a lot of pain.

I didn't know not to give him Doxycycline while he was laying down.... it made him throw up twice in a row, both times it was bile. You know how scary bile is to us now. So I didn't feel like I could leave him here alone. His leg where they harvested the skin for the graft hurts like a *%&$@#*)!@! and he can't get up and move around easily, so if he had to go to the bathroom while I was gone he would have been stuck. And he had quite the stomach issues this morning in addition to the throwing up. So I called Dustin and asked if he could run an errand for me.

Not only did he run this awful girl-errand of buying mattress pads, sheets, pillows, trash cans and tons of disinfectant at Walmart, but when he delivered the stuff to the apartment, I know he saw we were really struggling with the day. He made up some excuse of not wanting to get into the traffic to go home, and stayed with us and made us laugh a lot for several hours.

I sent Dustin and email and said that at the end of the day, if you can look in the mirror and say you made a difference to someone else, then you can say you had a good day. Dustin had a GREAT day today! So many thanks for knowing exactly what we needed today.

Thanks, also, to so many of our friends in IMC who reached out to us today through emails, Facebook and text messages to be sure we were doing okay. You, too, made a difference.

P.S. I forgot to mention that the lung doctor who was on call last evening did come and did finally take the trach out. He didn't want to because Dr. Shapiro didn't want to until after the sleep study. But Parker was determine, and MAD (oh, so mad!), so he agreed and took it out. Thank goodness for that.... :-0

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!