6/4/2016 - The White Discharge

As gross as the sound of that is, it made me laugh.

On Saturday June 4th, I was slated to be discharged (read the previous post).  I had blood taken during the 5am blood-work checks prior to residents rounds, to see what my liver enzyme and liver rejection levels were.  Both appeared ok but they did tweak my pill list to add another milligram of Prograf (one more pill, isn't the end of the world when you're already taking so many),  The attending Physician made rounds and signed that it was OK for me to head home.  Even though he did this early in the day (~9am), I knew it would be after 3pm when discharged.  Turns out, it was actually 7pm and right in the middle of the shift change for any of the 12 hour staffers (which is many of the SICU folks who were caring for me).

I still was able to have all 3 meals in the hospital.  We were joking one day, because I ate what my good friend Blair referred to as "gray beef" for dinner.  I think I was making them sick but I was so hungry I just shoveled anything in my mouth that I could.

ICU policy states that you have to have at least two viable IVs in at all times in case things go bad.  The very last step of discharge is to pull the IVs.  I had a couple of the usual needles in and then they had the gauge a Hi-C juice box drink straw sized IVs.  In these cases, they're long plastic tubes in your veins and they literally leave a hole in your arm or neck or wherever they're pulled out.  You can see below the arm hair they took off then they pulled this guy out.  Felt super good after it was out though!

Keeping the hole under pressure and elevated to make sure it's not gonna bleed.

One of the harder things that we had to do was pull off my wedding band when I went under.  I really wanted to keep it on but two reasons why they did not allow it.  1)  Your hands swell when you have all this trauma and they pump you full of fluids and 2) They want to scrub you in and make sure no germs are anywhere on you.  So, after the swelling was down and I was ready for discharge, the Ladies of the ICU (the wives of the many men in there) would all wear rings around their necklaces.  It was like the Bad Luck Club (my twist on the Joy Luck Club).

Luckily, she agreed to marry me again and I got my ring back

Ring back on, and back down to my weight from Senior year in High School, 180lbs.  

Also saying goodbye to my green morphine button.  I could push it every 10 mins, it would push a drug drip right into my mainline.  It was pretty good, helped relax me.  I liked this much better than the other narcotics they would give me later that made the room feel like it was a giant moving ceiling of Tetris blocks.