The Girl in the Plastic Bubble

Oh, for Pete's sake people, I'm FINE!!! A fact I kept trying to convince the hospital staff of until at 4:05 today my doctor walked in and quite simply asked if I was ready to go home. I'm sure it wasn't a hallucination when at that precise moment the hospital loudspeaker suddenly broke into the Hallelujah chorus... ok, so it didn't, but if my life were a movie it would have been highly appropriate.

I'm pretty tired (since I've done all of that sitting around over the last five days) and my arm where the IV lived for nearly all five of those days is a bit sore, but honestly, I'm feeling pretty darn good. In fact, I really never felt that badly. I think this one we caught at the perfect time, though clearly to avoid it completely would have been better. The biggest annoyance today was having to wait almost two hours for my discharge papers and the nurse INSISTING I ride in a wheelchair to leave (even though I had seen other patients leaving on their own two feet, and even though I tried to convince her I wasn't lying when I said I'd walked a mile yesterday and half a mile today). Could be a lot worse, but isn't, a fact I remind myself of frequently.

So I'm all set to enjoy my vacation, I mean sick leave, encourage my little platelets to keep multiplying and bide time until Kile can come home. Thanks for all of the positive thoughts, messages, and prayers. They continue to get me through.

Carpe diem - Trela

Incubating a virus

Well, it looks like Trela's go round with the bacteria is over, (squashed the bugs) but Kile has been having a rough go of it with hand foot and mouth disease. Since this is (of course) a very contagious disease, and we're not sure if Trela has had it, Kile is going to live with grammy for the next few days if Trela gets to come home.

Sounds like she may be able to come home in the next day or two, as long has her blood counts hold and her vitals stay normal. She's feeling much better and even walked a mile (literally) in laps around the ward yesterday. She was very happy to see the Cardinals beat the Padres, (ok, maybe I was a little more pleased than she) and had a pretty good day yesterday.

Other than that, things continue to be very busy around here and I'm sure they will slow down sometime by 2008.

ERic

UPDATE: As I was signing my name Trela called and she made bail. Sounds like she'll be coming home today after all.

ERic