Recovery

Originally posted May 31, 2017

First day home post-surgery…

Tony loves movies, so he is doing one of his favorite things to pass the time while his body heals.

Today we met with a nurse from Access hospice home health and she delivered a couple of cases of nutrition and another box of various goodies from the VA. A nurse from Access will be visiting us a couple of times a week.

Because part of Tony’s treatment plan included a tracheostomy, the VA arranged for a local respiratory specialist and some expensive equipment. They didn’t realize that the trach tube was removed while we were still in the hospital. We are so blessed to not need all of that care here at home!

It’s proving to be a bit of a challenge settling into a new routine. I’m going to have to set some alarm reminders on my phone so that we don’t get distracted. Nutrition is administered four times a day and it takes about 30 minutes to push it through the feeding tube. Then there are several meds to keep track of. Tony has been a little grouchier than usual today and I think it’s because he went longer than 6 hours between pain meds.

Tony isn’t in a huge amount of pain. He does comment that it feels like some stretching is going on around his neck. (I can’t imagine what that must feel like.) He also experiences a bit of discomfort in the left leg. When he is walking, the leg sometimes lurches forward quickly as the thigh learns how to function without the muscle that was removed.

While we were in the hospital, Tony set the temperature of the room at 69 degrees, so he has been a little uncomfortable with these 80 degree temps. We have fans running, but I wonder how long it will be before he agrees to let us put in the window A/C. The kids have already pulled the A/C units out of storage. Ha ha

I did manage to coax him out of the house for a brief walk this evening as it was cooling off.