Double Duty

Oh, the good and the bad of being back home. The good is sleeping in your own bed, being on familiar turf, seeing the friends that you’ve been shut off from; the bad, the dog won’t walk herself, the child is acting like a child and worst of all, the wife won’t get out of bed to cook or clean. This is just not right. It’s been two weeks since surgery.

I may have used that joke before but it is a classic so why not bring it out again?

I’ve been waiting to post until after the visit from the home health care nurse. Imagine me waiting for a medical professional before I give you the report. I must be getting soft.

Renee had a slight fever yesterday and was still feeling the effects of the ride home. I-71 in Kentucky is a pretty rough road. They’ve improved a couple of sections but KY-DOT needs to repave most of it. The whole stretch was brutal on the patient.

The nurse showed up and was not too happy about having to negotiate a flight of stairs. She made it but not without huffing and puffing and some visible discomfort. I think she’s in worse physical shape than Renee. I needed to get a chair for the nurse! How can she hear Renee’s chest if she’s breathing that loud?

She hollered at Renee for not taking her pain medication. Her parental units put it in her head that she’s going to get hooked so she’s trying to tough it out. Big Mistake!


Too much information portion:
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Renee’s been having problems since the surgery with leakage. The seal on the bag is giving her some trouble. The old stoma was an end ileosomy, the end of the intestine hangs out the side. The new stoma is a loop ileostomy, there is a hole cut in the side of the intestine and they kind of jam the edge with the hole in it out.

Renee and I changed the bag yesterday and we did what the professional stoma nurses in Cleveland couldn’t, we got it to stick. The nurse today came in and had to look at the stoma so she ripped off the perfectly placed bag and then fit Renee with a new one. There is an art to choosing the correct connection, everyone is different. You would not believe the number of choices available to colostomy patients. Straight, convex, one piece, two piece, glues, pastes, sticky rings, powders and belts all made to ensure a comfortable seal on your plastic pouch. Nurse Huffnpuff failed. An hour after she left, clean-up aisle 1.

I needed to run Cassidy to a friend’s and pick up a nausea prescription for Renee, who’s been having a tough time on the north end too. I did not have time to clean up after the specialist. Renee called the service and the nurse had to come crawling back up the stairs. When I returned she was still there finishing up. She was already in her street clothes. Renee must have been her last stop of the day. A stop she got to make twice. Oh, but that's what she gets for using our supplies after she told us that her company provides them all as part of the fee. She got hit with some bad leakage karma.

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Renee is now resting after sucking down a good portion of a vanilla milkshake, the only thing she's eaten all day. With the pain medication kicked in and the nausea pill doing its stuff maybe she can continue in this restful state until morning.