Going Home

A few days after my last surgery the physical therapists started trying to get me to walk to the bathroom, walk across the hall, and even climb mock stairs. Of course this was using a walker or crutches and with two or more persons assisting so that I did not fall down or trip over the various tubes sticking out of me! The problem is I was just too weak. Blood tests showed a low hemoglobin count. It took two transfusions over two days to improve my strength enough to make it down the hall and over the mock stairs that comprised the hospital exit exam. Suddenly I found myself on the way to the car for the long ride home. Sitting in the back seat with my legs extended, every bump in the road was painful. Hours later I arrived home and two friends came to help me cross the threshold. If felt good to be back home but to be honest both my wife and I were a bit scared. In the hospital we had round-the-clock attention from an army of nurses and specialists. Now suddenly we were home alone and sorely lacking in all the fancy tools we had in the hospital. We had no automatic bed, no swiveling table for eating in bed, no handicap-accessible toilet. In fact, I could not even get through the bathroom door in my walker so we had to call a friend take the door down for us. My wife also had to get back to work after missing two weeks to be with me. How would I make it through the day alone if I could barely get out of bed, much less make lunch or get into the kitchen cabinets? As we struggled to get to sleep that first night we thought how in the heck are we going to get through this?