We've Been Discharged

Sorry for the delay in updates. After we got home around 3:15 we all took turns taking naps to try to catch up on some sleep. No one got much at the hospital. Right before we got let go we had to be moved to the hallway because of tornado warnings in the area. They said they have a three leveled weather alert system and any warning that is a 2 or 3 means we have to evacuate the rooms. That was great b/c Connie's neighbor was about a 12 year old girl with a hacking cough. Think non-stop. Even his nurse said to keep him facing away from her since she was coughing so bad and he didn't need that. I quietly asked her if she could make the girl wear a mask so our nurse passed masks out to all the patients in the hall as a precaution and that way it didn't single out the girl.

The in-house pediatrician and Dr. Bruns (Dr. Bromberg's partner) viewed this morning's echo and chest x-ray and both felt they looked fine. Until official word comes back on his cultures from the lab, they are calling it "just a virus" of some sort. He was given a final dose of IV antibiotic (don't even remember the name) and sent home to follow up with Dr. Davis (the pediatrician) either Weds or Thurs. I think we're going to shoot for Thursday b/c Connie's got PT first thing in the morning and it would probably do him good to be "left alone" for a day. He was not too happy today and all that is involved with staying in the hospital was starting to wear on him a bit. I hope this isn't the beginning of being afraid of medical personnel. He's typically been so open to all the people but this morning they woke him up to do his echo and the tech didn't make much of an effort to be his friend, if you know what I mean. Same thing at X-ray time. He'd just fallen asleep for his afternoon nap and they came for him. We woke him up, undressed him and laid him on a cold, hard table to take two pics of his chest. Poor baby. Mookie is very happy to have Mommy home now too.

Now that things have settled down, I have remembered I need to thank Caryn, Adam and Mrs. Dressel for offering to stay with the girls until Grandpa could arrive Sunday night and also thank Grandpa George for dropping everything to come on a moments notice and last but not least, thank Grandma Marybelle for staying the night and taking care of the girls Monday so that Greg and I could be with Connie. Your help was so appreciated!

Most of all we want to thank God for watching over and protecting Connie during this illness. What seems like a little fever and runny nose to most people can quickly turn scary for our little miracle. Greg and I couldn't get the thoughts of two heart kids who recently passed away unexplicably from "just a virus" out of our heads so we decided to err on the side of caution and get it checked out. We are glad we did.

Funny note: The RN that saw us first in the ER listened to me explain his heart history, read the paper that U of M told us to give to any ER personnel explaining his condition and surgical procedures and then asked, "So this Double Switch, is that an operation?" Then the in house pediatrician from early Monday morning said, "Let me get this straight, he has Transposition that's been corrected?" I said, "No. He has congenitally corrected transposition. He had a repair called a Double Switch." I don't think she ever fully understood what I meant. It definitely feels surreal to me that when we are out of our small cardiac circle of medical professionals how his condition seems to puzzle everyone. Even his nurse practitioner that saw him today has a daughter with CoArctation of the Aorta and had surgery and after finding out we had his surgery in Michigan and no, we weren't from Michigan asked, "How did you go about finding a surgeon in a different city?" She was just blown away by that. The ultrasound tech said over and over how complex he was and how hard it was to get a look at his valves because his anatomy was so different. She does heart echos for a living and has been doing it for 18 years! Hard to believe she was puzzled by his defect. That said, we have absolutely no complaints about our stay at St. John's . Each and every nurse, PCA, doctor and tech were friendly and offered to get us anything we needed. That's pretty unusual these days to not get at least one person whose having a bad day. We would highly recommend them for peds and peds emergency.