Paul got a shower tonight. There's nothing like sitting in a hot shower to make you feel better. A sponge bath can only go so far to getting you clean, especially after 3 weeks! We waited all afternoon for the nurse to be available to walk us to the shower, but we eventually got there and he felt much better after the shower!
He did great in his PT and OT today. He got dressed this morning, no more hospital gown. :) Part of his Occupational Therapy was to play Uno with some other patients, standing up. I guess they all had to stand until someone won. Paul said he was strategizing the whole time to get someone to win - he didn't care if it was him, he just wanted to sit!! His PT consisted of more walking, exercises, and steps. He walked several laps, did 140ft WITHOUT THE WALKER!, and walked up and down some steps. When I walked in this afternoon, his first words to me were "I can get into our house!" He was very happy and relieved that he had passed that hurdle.
I talked to the nephrologist and the urologist today. They both said that as far as they're concerned, he can go home. It's all up to the rehab doctor now on whether he thinks he can go home. He'll of course still need dialysis for awhile and we'll probably have to get lab work done daily, but we can handle that as outpatient. I impressed upon Dr. Thomas that we can handle Paul at home; he's doing well with walking, he can get into and around our house, and that he would probably eat better at home and being home would raise his spirits tremendously. He is going to talk to the rehab guy in the morning and let him know all that. I've also told this to the social worker and I will call her in the morning to be sure she remembers! The PT nurse, OT nurse, regular nurse, social worker, and rehab doctor will have a meeting tomorrow to discuss Paul's progress and whether they think he needs to stay (and therefore, request more time from insurance) and I want to make sure Jennifer advocates for us and is pushing for us to go home. Hopefully they'll let him... He's scheduled for dialysis tomorrow after rehab, so I can see them trying to keep him until Saturday, but I'm going to see if he can't be discharged in the afternoon, and then do dialysis as an outpatient so he can come home afterwards. We'll see...
So, we got the story on Paul's roommate today. He went in for surgery on 2 Feb. He had a "hammer toe" where he had a bone spur in the joint of his big toe. They were just going to go in, take out the bone spur, sew him up and he'd be good to go home. They got in there and learned it was too infected so they amputated the toe. I hadn't thought much of it, but as he was telling us this I remembered from high school anatomy that your toes are very important in keeping your balance; they kind of anchor your feet and keep you from going too far forward. Sure enough, when he got up after the anesthesia wore off, he lost his balance and fell, breaking his collar bone and spraining his wrist. He also threw off his inner ear equilibrium and they say he'll probably have to deal with vertigo for the rest of his life. blah. He's still in rehab now to learn to walk with messed up equilibrium and with a missing toe. He said he should've thought better to schedule surgery for Groundhog Day...
Ok, so I totally made that up for a friend of ours. I don't know what's up with Paul's roommate, but he's a very nice man.
Double D - quit being a wuss and go to the doctor to get your toe fixed or we're going to start calling you Wussley!!!
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