Common Things at Last

For now, nothing more than the public diary of an anonymous man, thinking a few things out.

Name:
Location: Midwest, United States

Sunday, July 13, 2008

We're Home

Kay and I are at home now, having gotten back to our apartment around 7:00 last night. Her parents came over last night with dinner, and my mother will be bringing dinner over tonight. My dear sisters brought over flowers and basic groceries for us, leaving them with a sign that said, “Welcome Home!” By the time we got home, the cold I'd been nursing along the last few days was in full force, so I've been feeling poorly to the point that I could barely rouse myself at 10:00 this morning. I only got out of bed because the nurse was coming over to administer Kay's IV. Having the family care has therefore been a great boon.

The nurse, who came from Coram Specialty Infusion Services, was very friendly and professional. She was entirely unfazed by the abscess – beyond feeling bad for Kay that it had happened – saying that these things happen and are easy to solve. When we said we didn’t know what the second bacteria causing the abscess was (the first is e. coli – very common and nothing to worry about once identified, she said), she speculated that it might be a type of staph infection from the skin. No matter how much they do to clean the surface of the cutting area, she told us, sometimes things survive. Kay lamented that she forgot to wash with Dial antibacterial soap before the surgery, but I figure that if the iodine and things they use in the OR didn’t do it, store-bought bar soap is unlikely to. Still, would have been better to be safe than sorry, I suppose.

We are likely to return to Omaha in about three weeks, when Dr. Hilgers and Dr. Fitzgibbons (the chief of surgery at Creighton) will remove the Gore-Tex bandages. By that point, the course of anti-biotics will be over (the one being given via IV will end on Tuesday), and, we hope, the drain will have been removed. Kay is doing pretty well overall, though she is suffering some minor discomfort from the drain – when the nurses ask her to list her pain on a scale from one to ten, she usually says one or two. Her taste buds are also a bit discombobulated, we think as a result of the antibiotics. All told, we will be glad when the bandages are out and this part of the process is over. We can only hope that the inflammation from the abscess has not undone the progress of the surgery, but we won’t know until we go back in August.

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