Home from the Hospital

Trent was discharged from the hospital yesterday afternoon, much sooner than expected.  He is doing so well!  He has some pretty severe pain when he coughs but we keep encouraging him to do it anyway.  In the hospital they gave him an inhalation sporometer, or something like that, to exercise his lungs.  He immediately figured out that if he covered the holes he could exceed his goal by four times.  He impressed several people with how strong his lungs were before he revealed his sneaky little trick!  After surgery he was almost immediately back to his joking.  It was really nice to see that. 

While Trent was in ICU he was hooked up to a million and one tubes and wires.  Being "tied" down to his bed was especially annoying to him and he kind of had a panic attack.  His nurse, John, was so great with him.  He did the best he could to get all the tubes taken out as soon as possible.  By Friday morning he was off the epidural and the pain pump.  Then he had a little problem with his foley catheter being blocked.  John quickly took that out and Trent was instantly "relieved" :)  Shortly after that John took out the chest tubes.  There were two of them and they were each about 16" long!  They came out way better than the tubes from the hip surgery.   Then Bruce, the physical therapist came in and got Trent walking around the ICU so he could graduate to PCU. He had to teach Trent how to get himself out of bed using his body as a pendulum of sorts.  It took a little practice but Trent pretty much has it down.  I help him a little because he is still very sore but he is getting better and better all the time.  I was quite surprised how much better he looked to me after the surgery.  Dr. Karwande commented on that too.  He compared what Trent looked like the first time we met and it really was a dramatic difference.  Dr. Karwande just shook his head and said that Trent is a fighter and could go to PCU.  Darn right he is a fighter!

He moved up to PCU on Friday afternoon.  I stayed with him after that.  I am glad I did because at 4:00 in the morning someone came looking to draw blood from "Elaine".  I had to shoo her out of the room cause she had the wrong patient!

While in PCU the only thing he was hooked to was the oxygen.  It was so nice!  They even accessed his port so they could take out the peripheal IV.   That was really nice for Trent.  He hates having tubes in his hands because it makes them so sore.  While in the hospital he put on 20-25 pounds of water weight.  We are still in the process of getting that all off.  His legs were enormous!  We put some TED hose on and that helped some but his thighs gave new meaning to the term "Thundo Thighs"!  Even while he was walking he was irritated because of the "Chub Rub".  But all in all he recovered pretty quickly because he only ended up being in PCU until Sunday afternoon.  We were both really excited to get out of the hospital.  I really hope that is a door closed that we never have to open again.

When we got home the kids were pretty excited to see us.  They had made a big "Welcome Home" poster and had drawn little pictures of all the things they wanted to do with Trent now.  It was really cute.  Trent is  trying to get some good rest and a little exercise.  Right now I am listening to his voice from the other room and it sounds strong again.  Little by little we are going to get our daddy back.