Bill is home! I have very mixed feelings about it this time, and I think they are valid concerns and not just some perverse "I like not having to share the bed" feelings.

As I said before, pulmonology was not happy when I told her Thursday that cardiology had said he could be discharged. She also was not happy that a breathing device she had ordered had not been brought in, not like it was a big machine or anything, just a small bulb shaped plastic apparatus for inhaling. She also ordered more PT. So, she was not ready to discharge.

When I got there yesterday, in a driving rain with falling temps, I wondered why they would discharge a pneumonia patient in the rain on a day that the temperatures were going to fall at least 20 degrees. Surely, they would have more sense than that. Well, I was wrong. Dr. Threlkeld was the first through the door as usual and he had switched Bill to pill for antibiotics for 5 days. He also said he had been sprung. When I said pulmonary didn't want that he said he just read the notes, he didn't write them.

When Cindy came in from transplant she said he was being discharged and when I said the same thing to her she just said Dr. Edwards said he could go. I asked about when to follow-up with the DVT and got no answer as to who should follow and when, just to have him take the Eliquis. So, the PICC line was soon pulled and he could get dressed and we were home before 3, even after picking up the new prescriptions from the pharmacy.

After we got settled I really looked over the discharge instructions and the ONLY thing, other than the med schedule and diet info, was to keep his appointment with Mayo next month. Nothing about the DVT or to follow with Dr. Burbeck or the family doctor, or to make an appointment with Dr. Edwards. Absolutely nothing. There was also no mention of the pneumonia diagnosis which landed him there to begin with!

I've already messaged Stephanie, the nurse practitioner with pulmonary that has been following him at the hospital. I'm going to call this week-end and just leave a message with Stephanie at Mayo to have her call me Monday.

Bill is still very weak. Since his only PT was being moved with the Sarah Stander in ICU, he had barely walked for a week. He did walk to/from the bathroom and the chair in step-down a few times. But he's still getting very short of breath when walking. It's like before he went to the hospital.

I told him he's not going to like me very much but I'm going to make him do his exercises and use his breathing things. He has 3 different ones and one of them is like doing the work of the other 2, just in a dual format. But if he doesn't, he'll end up right back in the hospital, which leads to a different dilemma, who will be the admitting dr. It seems like Memphis automatically admits to transplant if the patient has had a transplant, no matter what the condition is that is causing the admission. It seems to me that Dr. Burbeck should have been the admitting dr. since it was lung related and not transplant related. Stephanie from Mayo told me that even with them, if it wasn't transplant related, he wouldn't have gone to the transplant floor. He would have gone to a regular floor and they would just follow for transplant meds. Makes perfect sense to me.

I got all the new meds added to his weekly containers and the first time always makes me very nervous. Of course some of the days already had the regular meds from before he was admitted. So I had to go through those to see what they were, take out one that they were changing the dosage on, and then add the new ones. I'll probably go through the list again and get them put on the list I keep in his medicine box.

I had to turn the heat on this morning. The outside temp was 40 when I got up. It was only 66 in here, which would have been OK for me. But, I started thinking that it probably was not good for Bill to just stay under throws, especially just getting out of the hospital. So, I only put it on 70 to take the biggest chill off. Since it's supposed to be cool all week-end, I'm going to make some potato soup tomorrow. If I wanted to do it today I would have to be at Walmart right now to get the ingredients since it's a crockpot recipe. I am going to make cinnamon rolls for breakfast and we have things for lunch. Dinner may be country fried steak, but Bill mentioned pizza last night so maybe we'll just order pizza. He's going to need some empty calories. When he weighed at the drs. office last Thursday he weighed 156. His weight at discharge was 146 and he was eating everything they were giving him, except the other morning when they gave him oatmeal with no milk, even though it was on his menu. So, I've got to fatten him up again.

There you have it, my concerns about going forward. I've got a long list of things to do, some that can't be done until Monday. And if I don't get them written down, I'll forget them. So, that's next on my to-do list for this morning.

I'll probably start going back to weekly posts now, unless something else happens. On a good note, we found out last night that we are getting another great-grandchild, probably in the late spring, early summer. They had been trying for a year and didn't think it was going to happen. So more baby knitting. These last afghans are never going to get finished!