Baptism by Fire...

April 30, 2009, 3:00 pm EST. My husband gets home from his extended medical stay. It's the first time he's been home since November 23, 2008. I don't know what I expected. Perhaps a smile or a "hallelujah" on his part or something. Instead I get a depends full of poop and then he threw up on me and the freshly made bed. He had been home for all of 10 minutes and I already had to change his clothes and his bed sheets. An omen probably.

I've been doing this long enough to know that things don't always go as planned, in fact, they very seldom go as planned. No home health personnel even showed their faces today. NOBODY! So it's just me and the daughter. He's all ours today. I have no pump for his overnight, gastric tube feeding. I have no insulin in the house because I didn't know what dosage or what type of insulin he had been getting. There's no bandages in any of the bags that were dropped off with him so I have nothing to do dressing changes with tonite. Of course he needed one because of the poop incident upon arriving home. He has several decubitis ulcers from being in the bed too long. These things are nasty and it's always best to avoid getting them. It's always hard to catch up or get ahead of them once they start. Diligence and persistance is the only way. So I had to go to the local pharmacy and buy bandages and tape, insulin and needles and I also got him some lip balm and Robitussin cough syrup. $86.00 for that. I couldn't use his insurance plan because then I would have needed prescription from his doctor for the insulin. And the nursing home doctor didn't send any prescriptions home with him. So buying the insulin was all I could do.

I prepared spaghetti with a meat sauce for dinner. He ate 3 forks full. That was all there was to that. He didn't even swallow those. So his answer of "yes I'm hungry" was apparently something he thought he should say whenever he's asked if he's hungry. After failing to get him to eat anything more substantial for dinner, I realized that perhaps I've made a grave mistake in getting him home. It was sobering to say the least. But I'm determined things will go better once the home health agency arrives and takes over the patient care. I haven't done real patient care in over 15 years. It doesn't take long before my body reminds me.

He's been home for 8 hours and I've changed him twice, changed his clothes once, changed his sheets once, replaced his "draw" sheet once, tried to get him to eat and turned him twice. I feel like I've been working for a month already. He's resting comfortably in his bed in our room with the TV on. It's going to be a long night I think. Hopefully he'll sleep for the rest of the night. I will turn him over one more time before going to bed.

The home health folks can't get here soon enough. I will be calling them if they're late tomorrow. Someone's got to get his tube feedings going and his dressing changes started.

What a grand first day home. It's had a little of everything already.

Welcome Home Baby!