Home Again

Home sweet home! Ah, never a better cliche than that! But now that I'm here, I just a bit ticked off. First, I wake up every morning at 5:30A (blood taking time), expect someone to bring me my pills and stuff when I need it (hey, getting waited on, even by the institution is nothing to sneeze at--no pun intended), start looking for breakfast at 6:30A (and I never used to eat breakfast, if you call Cream of Wheat breakfast), and then the finger-poking (blood sugar), vitals every hour it *seemed*, and then there's lunch (soup, pudding-like stuff, jello), and then more drugs, a nice nap or chatting with the nurses and the PCA's (GREAT bunch of folks there on 9 East), read a bit (morphine really inhibited my ability to stay focused for more than three minutes, so I am sure I read the same thing over and over and over... Then there's supper, more vitals, more poking, more pills (slid down courtesy of viscous Lidocaine--great tasting stuff with a texture to die for...), Cliff came over, watched me pick papers and gnats out of the sky (hey, I'm telling ya, that morphine stuff makes things seem REAL! I could have been the Velveteen Rabbit!) and then some TV. Now, here I sit at home, no one to tell me when to take my pills, feed me Breakfast, Lunch and Supper (I really miss the part where they brought my food tray and I had to tell them to take half of it back because it did meet the dietary requirements PRINTED ON THE SHEET!) For example, soft liquid, bland diet, no acidic or spicy foods. What did I get? Orange juice (insert other fruit juice here too), tomato soup, stuff with chocolate, bulky foods, etc. So now I have to figure all that stuff out myself. Bummer. The worst part? No one to talk to but the cats. I really enjoyed talking to the nurses and PCA's. I really miss them. They made what would have been a very crappy two weeks into something with fond memories to go along with the "what the heck is going on with me?" memories. I tried to take pictures when I became lucid enough to realize I should make a mini-book or something about this event. I'll try to get some posted.

I had some really great friends stop by and see me, I was really surprised. I'll apologize now for anything I said that didn't make sense. Everyone was so thoughtful, I had some beautiful flowers and cards, and my friend Rebecca brought me this most wonderful bag full of goodies and 2 (and I said TWO) scrapbook magazines to read--and TWO I hadn't read. I am sure I read them three times but as I look at them now, I don't remember a thing...