10:53am
Nathaniel is awake and he’s pissed off! He wants to go home! This is the best news I could possibly offer right now. Granted, he can’t go home and he’s going to spend the next however many days loudly reminding me that he wants to go home, but the fact that he’s yelling about it is huge.
He is having a lot of problems with words — “wrists are too strong” “bathpan” for “bedpan”, stuff like that — but hey, his brain has been in the equivalent of a deep freeze rollercoaster for the past 2 days so I’m happy with it
I do wonder if they spend enough time explaining to people who want to become nurses that essentially they’re going to be plumbers. IVs, feed pumps, suctioning someone, chest tubes, they’re all plumbing. Most of the human body is plumbing. And just like plumbers, they spend a lot of time cleaning up someone else’s sewage.
I have also found my limit, btw. I’ll help N to the toilet and back, I’ll move his bed, i’ll feed him by hand if he needs it, wipe his nose, wipe his butt, all that, but if they say “bed pan” I am right out. Running for the hills so to speak.
***
4:59pm
Nat went from almost frantic this morning to all but asleep again this afternoon. The big test we were waiting for — his ammonia levels — just came back. If the docs are happy, they’ll be transferring him back out of the ICU and into a normal room. I don’t think they’ll let him walk around yet but at least there’s hope he’d get over to the CF floor.
Either way I’m taking some of his stuff home so they don’t have to move it across the hospital again and nothing gets lost.
So all in all good news!