I'm going home!!!

Tomorrow marks 3 weeks post-op from surgery #1 and 2 weeks post-op from surgery #2. Three weeks ago today, I was packing my bags for the hospital. Hard to believe! I was nervous and eager to get things going. Well, we got them going alright! And now I'm heading home after spending 2 weeks in the hospital and 1 week in a sub-aute rehab facility. Although things didn't exactly go according to plan, they went well for the most part. Surgery #1 was the first hurdle, and in looking back on it, I cleared it with relative ease. Surgery #2 was a different story: 9 hours, lots of blood lost, difficulty handling the morphine which was wrapped around my spine to maximize pain management, 36 hours of the most bizzare and at times, the scariest hallucinations you could ever imagine -- and then there's the whole acute rehab nightmare of "he said, she said" surgeon vs. insurance company which in the end I never DID get to go to an acute rehab facility. Instead, my choices were (per my insurance company) to either (1) go straight home or (2) go to a subacute facility (aka: nursing home) for a week or so.

Given those two crappy choices, I made the only decision I could which was rehab, even if it wasn't what I had planned for, expected or wanted. It was something - and at that point in time, going home was NOT an option. So I made the most of my time here and worked hard (or as hard as my body would allow) and now I'm going home tomorrow! On Valentine's Day! And in plenty of time for my son's 5th birthday, which is this Sunday! All of my equipment will be delivered tomorrow and I'll have a full first-floor setup, including a hospital bed, rolling walker, raised toilet seat and a variety of dressing aides designed at increasing and maximizing my independence. Visiting nurse comes out on Wednesday and home therapy (PT and OT) will be set up for 3x/week starting next week. Eventually I will be able to go for outpatient PT but right now, it's too early.

"So, how am I doing/feeling?" - Well, I'm doing pretty well considering I feel like Humpty Dumpty...except instead of falling off a wall, I feel like I was run over by a tractor trailer a few times. My insides were, at one point, on the outside which from what I've learned - they don't like being on the outside! The worst is most definitely behind me at this point...no more blood transfusions, fevers, scary hallucinations, blown veins (the central line took care of that!), panic attacks, etc. I am definitely in pain but it's a different kind of pain now...more like a healing pain. It's difficult to get comfortable and I can't stay in one position for too long but I'm quickly learning what works and what doesn't work as far as that goes. It's trial and error. I don't have nearly the amount of endurance and energy I had before the surgeries and so I often need to rest, semi-reclined. Sitting in a hard chair for too long is very painful so moving around helps keep me from getting stiff. I have right-sided weakness in my right leg and numbness from my knee to my hip bone which I didn't have prior to my surgeries which is slowly getting better with each passing day. I notice the leg weakness most when I'm tired or when I go up/down steps. My blood pressure, which was incredibly high prior to surgeries has since gone in the opposite direction and is extremely low. That, along with feeling cold all the time, feeling tired/fatigued and looking pretty pale, is from the anemia which I developed from the extensive blood loss during my second surgery. Nothing a few doses of iron for a few months can't cure though!

I am getting stronger and stronger each day and although I still need assistance with some things (like getting in/out of bed, up/down stairs, getting in/out of a car etc), there are a lot of things I can now do on my own (like put my brace on/take it off, dress myself with the help of some really cool gadgets and get up/down from a chair). Of course, I can't drive yet or do household tasks but I can cuddle my kids and read them a book or play a game while they sit on the bed with me. It'll be a long time before I'm back to myself again but little by little, day by day, things get a little bit easier.

One thing that made this past week in rehab a lot more difficult was the fact that we had to very suddenly put our 3yr old lab, Tango, down last week. It was sudden and extremely sad not to mention untimely as I didn't even get to say my final farewells to him, but Chad and I take comfort in knowing that he is no loner suffering and he is now free from the uncontrollable seizures which plagued him for the past year. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I walked into the house yesterday, home for a few hours on a day pass from rehab, that my crazy happy gorgeous Tango was no where to be found. It was sad - and we will miss him a lot.