The last week has been pretty much more of the same…Alexander’s eating and fluid intake is the pits and you can add to that exhaustion due to not getting much sleep at night. His roommate for most of the time was a teenager who was hit by a car who required a lot more care than Alexander did. Of course, that means the lights are on after midnight for a hour or so and it’s no easy matter to get Alexander settled again.
Three days ago, Alexander was moved to a private room (the doctors figured that he can hardly recover if he’s not sleeping properly and being woken at all hours hardly helps that situation).
Being in the private room has helped somewhat by allowing him to sleep a little better. But his appetite and fluid intake still hasn’t been the greatest…it’s been better than it was but still well below where he was when he came in. Most of his liquids are having to be introduced using the syringe as he’s decided the bottle isn’t for him (we think it might be hurting him and that he’s shying away from the bottle for that reason).
But by today, we figured that if he isn’t going to eat or drink, he can at least do that at home and who knows…maybe being home in a familiar setting might well be what’s needed to get him eating and drinking again. Certainly, the quality of the food at home far outranks the offerings from the dietary section of the hospital who have some bizarre idea that mechanically soft foods means a chicken breast or a sandwich.
Thus, the fun begins today with Nurse Plod and what would turn out to be probably the slowest discharge of a patient and parents who were quite willing to be discharged in the history of medicine. The process started round 0900 this morning and it wasn’t until 1730 that we were finally on our way home. I’m thinking the coordination of the discharge could have been a lot more efficient than it was…and the truly sad part is that even I know better because discharge planning is one of the things our application does (and I wrote the big screen where most of the action happens!).
1730 hours and you’re in downtown Washington, D.C. Guess where you’ll be in about an hour or so! You guessed it…not terribly far down the road. It took us ninety minutes to get to Fredericksburg and about three-and-a-half hours to go the rest of the way. We decided to stop in Zebulon for the night before continuing on to the house as it had been a long and trying day.
Mommy had an interesting observation as we were waiting to turn onto New York Avenue to get to I-395. We had come to Washington on holiday in 2000 before we were married and it seems like Washington was a lot nicer place to visit back then and that were it not for Alexander, we’d really have no desire to come back any time soon. I couldn’t agree more with that! Mind you, there are things about Washington that I’ll always enjoy…the Smithsonian (particularly Air and Space), the Lincoln Memorial, and the National Archives. But after spending a couple of weeks up there, it gets really old, really quick. Needless to say, it’s not high on our priorities when it comes to going on holiday in the near future…
But Alexander is home and that’s the most important thing!