Thursday ... The Fun Continues

(If you haven't read yesterday's post about Doug's accident, you might want to go read it before continuing with this post.  So you'll at least have a clue as to what I'm writing about.)  :)


I woke up to rain Thursday morning.  Totally fitting for my mood.  Having Doug in the hospital overnight didn't lend itself to a good night's sleep.  Not that I'm not used to sleeping alone.  That comes with the territory of having a husband who works shifts.  But just the stress of Wednesday and wondering how he was feeling and the overwhelming disappointment of not being able to have our weekend getaway without the kids, I just didn't sleep well.


But Keira had her check up for her broken arm so I had to get up and moving early.  I had made the appointment for 8:20 a.m. figuring that Doug would be home to watch the boys and get Nick on the bus if we weren't back in time.  Obviously those plans changed.  We took the boys with us and I only wanted to kill them about a half a dozen times while we were there.  :)


Keira had another X-ray to see how her arm is healing.  It is healing perfectly.  The Physician's Assistant, Bethany, said that one more week and the sling can probably come off.  We will go back for one more X-ray, then we shouldn't have to go back again except for a possible follow up in 3-6 weeks.  After the doctor appointment I dropped Keira and Nick off at school.  We got there just as their bus was arriving, so at least they weren't late.


I didn't find anyone to watch Alex for me so I took him with me to see Doug.  We talked about the rules of the hospital.  How you need to be quiet.  And you can't jump up on Daddy's bed.  And how we're not allowed to touch any buttons or levers.  Boys, ya know, love those kids of things.  He said he understood and would do his best to be on his very best behavior, so we went.


Doug's hospital room was in the new Patient Tower.  The part of the hospital we've been watching being built for I don't know how long.  We drive past it almost every day.  Either on the way to preschool or to the gym.  We rode the elevator up to the 6th floor, which Alex absolutely loved.  Me, not so much.  I'm more of a stairs person.  We wandered around looking for his room and finally found it.  Alex was doing his very best to be quiet.


Doug was awake but resting his eyes when we got there.  We visited with him a few minutes.  He asked me if I had called to cancel our hotel reservations yet.  I had not, but I brought the phone number so I could call them there.  I did so immediately so I wouldn't forget.  I explained what happened, why we needed to cancel, and she told me she would credit my deposit back to my account.  I was pleasantly surprised because the receipt said you had to give at least 48 hours notice in order to get your deposit back.  We were due to check in Friday afternoon - anytime after 2:00.  So that was a bit of good news in the midst of all the other stuff.


I took a couple pictures of Doug and of his hand, much to his chagrin.  :)  He doesn't like having his picture taken under good circumstances, let alone under these.  But he understands ... the scrapbooker in me likes to have pictures.  Of everything.  Even the bad stuff.

He's telling me to hurry up and take his picture already.  My camera shoots a bright light at the subject so it can focus and in his darkened hospital room, he wasn't thrilled with the light.

His hand, well, his 4 fingers are all bandaged up.  The index, ring, and pinky fingers each had stitches.  The middle finger had emergency surgery and a pin inserted.  He has to keep it elevated, so they gave him this big foam thing.  The kids call it his "big cheese".  :)


He had just had a dose if IV antibiotics to try to prevent infection.  He was told he'd have to stay until 6:00 p.m. or so because he was due for another one around 4:00 and they took about 1.5 hours.  Fun times.  The nurse brought me his three prescriptions so I could go get them filled before I took him home later.  Yippee.


We didn't stay long.  Not much to keep a 4 year old entertained in a hospital room.  Especially when he's not allowed to push any buttons or pull any levers.  We got sort of lost trying to find our way back to the elevator so 2 nice security guards showed us the way.  I thought it would have been funny if they had handcuffs and put them on Alex.  They didn't seem to have any, so I didn't ask.  Although we did get a few strange looks on our way through the halls.  People must have thought we were troublemakers being escorted out. :)


Alex and I ran to the pharmacy then did a little shopping at Target.  He talked me into buying the DVD "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs".  They had it for $13 right by the register.  One of those impulse buys.  But I liked that movie when we had rented it, so I agreed.  We came home and watched the movie.  Most of it anyway.


Around lunchtime I was finally able to find someone to watch Alex for a couple hours (thanks, Jody!), so I dropped him off, went to pick up Doug's meds, and headed back to visit Doug.  He was just chillin'.  I showed him all the pills he had to take.  I figured he could ask the nurse any questions he might have about them.


I was there when the food lady came in to take his order.  She asked him if he was going to be there for supper since he had been telling her each time that he was leaving soon.  I thought that was interesting that someone actually goes around to take food orders.  She was carrying this little computer pad thingy.  Pretty cool.  At Children's when you want food, you call the cafeteria and they bring it up to your room about 30 minutes later.


I left around 3:00 to pick up Alex and get home in time for Keira and Nick to get home from school.  We did the normal after school stuff and waited for Doug to call to tell us that they were releasing him.  He finally called around 6:00, so we all piled in the car to go pick up Daddy.


We had decided that someone would wheel him down and the kids and I would wait outside, so I called him when we got there and we waited.  And waited.  And waited.  I had parked in the pick up lane and was standing at the end of the sidewalk outside the Tower entrance.  It seemed to take forever for him to get there.  But he finally did.  When I opened the back door to hand Keira Doug's foam thingy to hold, Nick was laughing and said, "what's with the big cheese thing?"  The "big cheese" name stuck, so that's what we call it now.  


"Don't play with the big cheese."  
"The big cheese is not a toy, please keep your fingers off."
"Do you need your big cheese, Daddy?"


Yeah, fun stuff.


Doug pretty much came home, swallowed a few pills, and went to bed.  He didn't get any sleep in the hospital because of the machines making noise, the blood pressure cuff squeezing his arm every so often, and the PA announcements.  So he was pretty tired.


We all were.  But we were very happy to have him home.

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