I Wanna Go Home

There's a song by James (my favorite band, who's concert we had to miss because I was in the hospital and Bennett was only 3 days old) that has the chorus

I wanna go home, right now
I wanna go home right now
I wanna go home, right now
I wanna go home.

That's how we've been feeling the past few days.  I think Chris and I have both been singing it.  The end is in sight, but still a bit unknown.  I think we've been a little frustrated all weekend, and also today.  On Friday there had been mention about maybe going home in the middle of the week.  Chris thought he remembered someone mentioning Tuesday as a possibility.  Well here it is Monday night, and we still didn't seem to have much definitive progress.

Earlier in the day the nurse practitioner said the decision of when we can go home is up to Bennett's cardiologist.  She tried getting in touch with him, but he was "un-pageable".  Finally she emailed back and forth with him and we were able to meet with him a little after 8:00 tonight.

Meanwhile he had another ECHO showing things as being normal for Bennett.  He had blood drawn which showed elevated creatinine levels.  Basically his levels are similar to those of a 10-year-old.  So tomorrow there will be additional tests to try to figure out that issue.  Bennett also had an x-ray.  Ugh, I felt so bad for the little guy- strapped to a table in just his diaper and I had to hold his arms steady above his head.  There was a lot of loud screaming.

As a write this, Bennett is taking his car seat challenge.  This is a requirement of the hospital before he can go home.  He has to be strapped in his car seat for 90 minutes while being on the monitor.  If there are any major drops or peaks to his stats during those 90 minutes, he fails.  What's annoying though is that Bennett's car seat is only rated for babies over 5 pounds.  Since Bennett is still below this weight, we had to buy a car bed.  This allows him to lie flat in the car.  However, it's strapped directly into the car and isn't easily removed.  This means we can't easily remove the car seat to put him in a stroller, etc.  But it was either this or pay twice as much for a standard car seat that is rated for 4 pound babies.

Also before discharge we'll have to meet with someone from nutrition to learn the secret formula to his high calorie breast milk (they add formula powder and other ingredients to turn 20 calorie breast milk into 30 calorie).  We also will need to get his prescriptions filled so that we can have practice drawing them up.  (Currently they have been coming pre-filled from the pharmacy.)  Plus arrangements need to be made for visiting nurses, we need to find him a pediatrician, and I'm sure a million other things.

But back to our meeting with the cardiologist tonight.  I asked when we could go home.  He said this week.  He talked about the various tests tomorrow re the creatinine issue.  Wednesday was mentioned.  And then I asked about if tomorrow would even be an option.    It's a possibility, assuming all the tests and everything else can be arranged!  If it does happen, it will likely be later in the day, but that's ok by us!

If tomorrow does become an option, it's going to be a busy day!  I sometimes feel as if there are a million people coming and and out of the room- nurses, clinical assistants, plebotomists, people from lactation, social workers, doctors, case managers, neurologists, etc.  I think that tomorrow it's going to be even more hectic!

And as an aside, this makes 3 posts in a row where the titles have been songs.