Have you ever been waiting for a call from a prospective employer after an interview? Or maybe waiting on communication from a "special someone"? You wait and wait and wait and hope that the phone will ring (old school) or that a text or email will pop up. It's excruciating sometimes.
Waiting for information at the hospital is pretty much that feeling. The least they could do is give me a Comcast timeframe. "A physician will be by to give you more information between 8am and 1pm, Debbie." Instead I sit here like a buffoon salivating for any tidbit all day long. I picture them waiting around a corner until I finally give up and decide to run down to Starbucks or zip to the Post Office, and then they rush in our room and talk to Steve when he is at his most exhausted and drugged.
One more teeny complaint, and then I will turn this frown upside down :). Hourly rounding is a joke. As you may have read, I left Steve alone for the first night since all of this started. I anxiously arrived this morning at 8:45am. The last RN had dropped by around 8am. No one even bothered to check in on him until he pressed his call light at 11am. If this happens while I'm here, what happens when I'm not?
When the RN finally arrived, I asked her how often they round. "Every hour," she cheerfully replied. I'm sure that the cheer was replaced by discomfort when I mentioned it had been three hours since anyone had checked on Steve. Please don't misunderstand...I wasn't rude at all or mean to her, but I did explain that I was trying to develop a comfort level with this new situation. I said that I believed Steve deserves a higher standard of care...even just the minimum required care! She agreed, and we are good friends now...although, I am unhappy that she took the whiteboard marker and filled her initials into all of the hours she missed. It's going to be very difficult for me to trust others.
So now I must focus on the positive. Thank you for listening to my frustrations. This is so overwhelming some days.
Steve gets to go home today (she says cautiously)! He just had his last infusion of antibiotics. He will also be receiving another unit of blood before we leave. His hemoglobin was trending downward again at 7.7. It's getting easier for me to see the signs.
We are both excited to be able to play with Poppy at home where she has room to roll. We should be home in time for Thursday Night Football...with intermittent channel switches for me to check up on The Biggest Loser :).
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