Recovery

Hospitals do not allow those who need the rest to get it.  During the night, a minimum of 3 interruptions occur.  At 11:00pm, one last check of vitals.  At 2:30am, someone comes to take blood and then at 4:30am, a mobile X-ray machine shows up to take a chest X-ray.  All interruptions require full-on bright overhead lights so the nurse can see what they're doing.  By 6:00am, they want my mom up and showered to get her day started.  Um, hello?  The day hadn't ended yet in my book.  Where were the 8 hours of sleep?   How can someone recovering from open heart surgery get any rest in these conditions? 

My mom is doing great.   She is able to walk the halls now without a walker.  Plus, when everyone sees us making the rounds of the 8th floor and comments how good she is doing, she stops to give them a little dance.  We've now left the Rocky theme song behind and moved on to showtunes.  The cast of "A Chorus Line" and "Chicago" have nothing on my mom when it comes to doing a little boogey. 

A few of the nurses have remarked how positive and upbeat my mom is. Yes, it is a wonderful trait that I've inherited.  Triple By-pass surgery is nothing to make light of and my mom is certainly very uncomfortable, but you wouldn't know it by her cheery disposition. I am happy to report the surgery has done nothing to diminish my mom's wonderful sense of humor.  If laughter is the best medicine, than we've got this recovery part down cold.

The days seem to fly by.  I am frankly a little surprised at how little time I've had to read.  I had big plans to plow through my list of about 8 books.  I read pretty quickly and expected to have finished at least 3 books in the last 5 days.  Ha!  I haven't even completed one.  Helping my mom and trying to make her more comfortable takes up a lot of time.   This is what I'm here for.

Friday night was especially rough and exactly no sleep occurred.  My mom was given a pack of steroids to start and the first dose resulted in sky-high blood sugar and blood pressure.  It was out-of-control and all I could of think of was my mom is not leaving this hospital any time soon.  In addition to the regular interruptions, every half hour the nurse came in to try to see if blood pressure medication would help.  It didn't and each hour got more frustrating than the next.  We finally convinced the doctor the steroids need to stop.  Between that and my mom going back on her insulin pump, all the readings started getting back to normal.  But it took a lot of persuading on our part to make this happen.  By Saturday afternoon, the chest tube had come out and more than one hospital staff remarked my mom was coming home on Sunday.

As of this posting, my mom is still rocking the hospital scene.  My sister Lori spent last night (Saturday) with my mom and I went to my dad and Rita's house.  It was very helpful to get a good night of sleep.

I am looking forward to getting my mom home and starting the next phase of her recovery.