Thursday, April 30, 2009

Home

Today was our first full day back at home with all of the kids. Vincent is doing great. He's taking his meds even though they taste aweful and he's so cooperative. The home nurse came yesterday, changed the dressing on his PICC line and taught me how to administer the IV meds twice daily. It's a little intimidating since things need to be sterile and all.

We got home late Tuesday night. The hospital staff worked with our insurance and found a home health nurse to help with Vincent's home care. It took a day or so to work all this out and then everything was set for us to go. The doctor was hesitant to discharge us at night after his 8pm med. Too many stray bullets and bad guys in that part of town. But we took our chances with the bullets feeling it was riskier to hang out with harmful bacteria in the hospital.

The home nurse came Wednesday morning and spent 2 hours with us. After that, we got to just chill out for a couple hours. George pulled weeds that were taking over our yard and Vincent helped him. It was nice being outside. I went to two different drug stores trying to find some Purell in an effort to minimize our risk of bringing something home from the hospital with us and also keeping Vincent and everyone else in our house healthy. Unfortunately, it's a bad week to try and find hand sanitizer with the swine flu and Oprah's MRSA special, there is a serious shortage of the stuff. I couldn't find a single tiny bottle.

Daniel and Gavin came home Wednesday evening and we had a little welcome home celebration for us all, yay Oreos. Vincent showed Daniel his PICC line as he got hooked up to the IV that night. Fascintating. He's got a tube like spaghetti sticking into the crook of his arm that goes right to his heart.

We visited Vincent's primary physician today, tomorrow we visit the ENT (Ear, Nose & Throat specialist). Then we should be done with doctors for a couple weeks. The home health nurse plans to come out once a week to change the dressing on V's PICC line and we give Vincent medicine 6 times a day. 12am, 6am, 8am IV, 12pm, 6pm and 8pm IV. I guess we'll get used to it. The plan is to do this for at least four weeks, then they'll check out the inflammatory markers in his blood and see if he's done May 21 when we meet with the infectious disease specialist.

We want to thank all of you who have prayed for us, wished us well, come to visit us in the hospital, brought us food and motorcycles and supported us through this. We have been so blessed by you and we thank God for you. Please pray that Vincent continues to respond well to these antibiotics and that he doesn't have harmful side effects. Also pray that we spend our time wisely with our kids, being sensitive to how they are feeling, not wanting Daniel to feel left out and shuffled off in all the craziness.

2 comments:

tami said...

That picture is too cute!!

Jessica said...

i love the diaper hanging out of the gown :) i'm glad you have everyone home and i'm sure you're are going to do an amazing job at keeping things running well, you always do :)