Hospital Update - 5

Should I keep calling these "hospital updates" if we're home now???

The roads coming home weren't very nice. In most places, one lane of the interstate was clear. But when you've got a long row of cars traveling at 45 mph, and then along comes an impatient dude doing 70 in a 4-wheeler, it gets a little nerve-wracking. Oftentimes, the other lane of the interstate was such a mess that it would've necessitated driving about 20-30 mph, and it sure ain't good to slow down that quickly on that kind of road to get out of the other guy's way. But we got home nevertheless. Well, almost home. Not quite.

Gary had called the fellow who does the plowing for church, to let him know our need to be able to get into the driveway. Oftentimes, church is left as the last thing on his list, and it gets to be quite a hardship when people here have to come and go from work. You just can't shovel 200' of a very wide driveway that's deeply drifted, when all you have are shovels and no plow. Even a snowblower would take a really long time. Well, when we got home, nothing was plowed. We couldn't turn into the drive at all. Everything the county plows had thrown off to the side of the road, was still sitting there in our entry-way. There was nothing to do but plunge the car into the pile of snow, just so as to get it off the road. Then we made a lot of trips, unloading the contents of the car and backseat and hauling it all up to the house through the drifts. Maggie had to be carried in -- and not piggy-back because that would be bad for the stitches. Not a happy or easy homecoming.

She began running her fever again, a little more than an hour after arriving home. We have to keep it under 101.5 or we may have to go back to the hospital. So far, we're staying under 101 with the help of tylenol and ibuprofen. (This is hard for me, because I tend to think fever is the body's way of fighting infection. However, fever also speeds up the pulse, and she seriously does not need increased pulse rate right now.)

She also has some serious puffiness where she was hooked up to the heart-lung machine. I hope continued rest and her prescription diuretic will help get that under control.

We'll just keep watching and resting. Hopefully we (that would mostly be me) can let other things slide around here while we make nursing the patient top-priority. Lots of tv this week. I got videos from the library that are educational, but I'll bet we end up watching more Hogan's Heroes than Shakespeare and Dickens. Oh well... the main thing is the fever and the puffiness. That's more important than history and literature right now.