Day 7: Fingers Crossed, I'm Outta Here!

Day 7 arrived with my blood pressure consistently staying at 90 or slightly above and the lower number hovering in the low 50's..........YAY!

While I was waiting for my doctor and today's verdict on going home, a resident came into my room and started discussing my file with me. I had never had a resident before...Only my surgical fellows and my surgeon. The resident said I should stay in hospital until Wednesday or perhaps even Thursday!
Uggh...that would be 5 or 6 more days

 It was decided my leg pain was nerve neuropathy and I was started on  Gabapentin last night and would be taking it 3 times a day. It takes 5 to 7 doses to see any results and then generally the dosage needs tweaked higher, resulting in another 5 to 7 doses before they can see if it is the right strength. The Gabapentin would mask the nerve neuropathy pain in my leg.

I was trying to wrap my mind around this, as it was the first I had heard I might be in that much longer. Luckily, my surgeon walked in just before the resident left. The resident repeated all the info he had shared with me and my surgeon said very flatly,...Mrs XXX will be safer at home. The resident tried to broach each of the reasons and the surgeon just repeated (several times in the same flat voice...Mrs XXX will be safer at home.

He then leaned forward to get full eye contact with me and repeated the same words with emphasis on the word "safer".

It was really strange...but I understood what he was trying to say. I stammered out that I agreed with my surgeon and felt I would progress at home. They left to sort everything out with the nursing station and I called my husband in excitement. He had to grab a quick shower and would drive in right after and would be about 1 and 3/4 hours till he would arrive.

I packed my belongings up and went out to the nursing station to see if I was safe to leave my bag and poles in my room and take the wheelchair down for a latte in the other building. I shared I would come back in an hour and a half as DH had a long drive to get me. They all seemed a bit shocked I was leaving and several nurses advised I should say I wanted to stay longer!  But I didn't want to stay longer!

As I turned to leave, feeling a bit worried about what I had agreed to, my surgeon came up and sort of motioned me over to where we would be out of earshot of anyone.

He was friendly in his tone and said goodbye and reminded me of the exercises to be done and recapped  demonstrating the ski poles. By this time, I was quite comfortable with them and had been covering territory poling about the wards each day. He recapped my meds and advised there were scripts to be picked up back over at the discharge desk on the ward. He had added back the T3's as he decided that the single falling BP episode that occurred while still on them, was most likely a positional BP problem as it was taken immediately upon sitting up.
As I said goodbye too, he again sort of leaned forward and said that sometimes things happen on a ward that can affect patient recovery. Some of those things had  happened to me, like the catheter not removed when he ordered it and then getting the UTI.  His orders left for me to be mobile as of day 2 and compression stocking removed, yet decisions made to not follow those orders implemented out of concern for the BP problem and the compression stocking not put back on. There were a bunch more I haven't even mentioned. They all boiled done to his decisions being overridden.
 In his opinion, when these types of things start to happen, sometimes they can snowball for a particular person...He felt I was that person...therefore he thought I was safer at home before something else went wrong.

He left me a list of what to do for each scenario that the resident wanted me to stay for.

Bid me goodbye and instructed me to return to his office in 4 weeks....

Hurrah!                 I'm Outta Here!!!