Discharge day…probably
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The Steinhaus Family
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The Steinhaus Family
The last few days have been quiet. We thought Andrew may be discharged on Saturday, but that changed Friday night after we learned that coordinating IV antibiotic delivery to NJ wouldn’t happen over the weekend. Several doctors he’d been seeing daily were also not working over the weekend, plus he was stable, so we did more sitting around than usual and enjoyed a few visitors.
Yesterday we learned how to inject his blood thinner, confirmed outpatient appointments, and began discussing how to gradually move medication times to ones that worked better at home. (For example, blood thinners at 1:45pm and 1:45am and overnight antibiotic infusions don’t make sense.)
As of now, we are planning for discharge today. Andrew got a picc line, and I am playing three-dimensional chess with scheduling the home nurse to teach us about IV antibiotics tomorrow morning at a time that’s consistent with the medication schedule and that allows us to get to his afternoon oncology clinic appointments.
The last 9 days have been terrible in many, many ways but easy in others. Knowing a large team of doctors and nurses were tracking him closely, ordering new tests and reacting quickly to the results, and giving medication at the right intervals was comforting. Once we get home, the pace of care slows way down and it’s largely on us to make sure the rest of what needs to happen actually does.
Elyse Steinhaus
over 1 year ago
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