Day 16: She's being discharged!!

It's mom's 16th day in Parkview Regional Medical Center and she's getting discharged already! It doesn't seem like she's been here that long (however, it feels like I've been in this hospital for at least a month)... I was going back through my pictures and found this shot I took of her monitor when she was in here on "Terrible Thursday".

If you'll look near the middle towards the bottom, there's a list of times and blood pressure readings. Take a close look at them.

She had an arterial line, so I can only assume that these have to be the most accurate blood pressure readings you can have. I'm not sure why there's the time gap in the numbers, either. I just happened to take the shot of this to send to my friend, who is a nurse, when she asked what her vitals looked like. Some of those pressures are basically "almost dead". If also assume that they were pumping some of those vaso-suppressors into her to get her blood pressure up to where it was when I did took this shot.

Anyway, back to good news.... she's getting out today.... to go back, well, in. She will be checking into a local hospital (Montpelier Hospital) for their rehab program. I'm not sure how long she'll be in there, but I imagine it's going to be a while before she's fully recovered. I know she is improving SO fast, but it'll still take some time. She will also still need to get those kidney stones taken care of and she still has her nephrostomy tube in her kidney. I assume that tube will stay in until her stones are gone. That left kidney is blocked and can't drain at all. The right kidney is the one that has the huge almost 40 mm stone in it, but it isn't blocked. Unfortunately, those stones also are probably coated in bacteria, so she'll have to stay on antibiotics until they're taken care of.

The rehab place is near mom and dad's house (about 10 minutes away), but it's around 1 hr 45 min from Christina's place and at over 3 hours from my house. I am going to be going home tonight - which I am thrilled about!! I haven't slept in my own bed for quite some time and I miss my family tremendously. I've chewed up 2 weeks of vacation time (my anniversary date is in late August, so it'll be a while until I have more days) being here at the hospital. I will definitely be coming back on some weekends to visit.

This whole experience has brought our family closer together and mom likes to say that it's giving all of us a fresh start to make things right with any estrangements that have happened. I will keep up my posts, just will be depending on my dad or the staff at the hospital to provide photos and mom can update me on what's going on with her there.