August 26

Baby doll did indeed visit me last night. I was so relieved to finally touch him after a week and a half that I got a bit swampy. Like I don't currently have enough things leaking on me! Whatever. My world is once again complete. I'm a happy girl.

I didn't end up having a very good hospital day yesterday. I had a tech named Jackie assigned to me and I was seriously worried that her ineptness was going to cause me injury. She was very nice but just not very with it.

And then there's two toned hair chick, who I think might be an actual doctor. She was less than useless if that's even possible. First she scolded me for not taking enough walks. I told her nobody had time to take me. I was baffled how their under staffing became MY personal responsibility. Anytime she walked into the room, even if she saw me struggling with a hookup, she would ignore it and simply do the Doppler exam on me, giving me no assistance at all. At one point early on I had asked if Dr. M had taken a tooth because i couldn't actually tell. She told me there was no reason for him to do that. I had to explain to her why it likely had been done. She looked in my mouth and said 'nope'. The next day I worked up the nerve to put my finger in my mouth and sure enough, there's a tooth missing. Last night she asked if I've been trying to swallow my spit. I shook my head. She told I should start trying to. I gave her the universal symbol for okay, how? She said she didn't know, I just needed to work on it. Yeah, okay, I think I'll wait for my swallow therapist, thank you very much.

Okay, enough crabbing. My night finally got infinitely better when Nurse Greg showed up for the night shift. Now there's someone who was totally meant to be a nurse. He rocks that job!

My phone in my room was just ringing. I wasn't even tempted to try and answer it. Go me! Weird that they're patching a call through to room with a patient who just had a total Laryngectomy.

The difference between the hospital on a Sunday and on a Monday is really rather mind boggling. I had actually noticed this at Highland too last year. Yesterday was a ghost town, today there was all sorts of excitement. Dr. O and team were in to see me bright and early. He said my flap is slightly swollen but he doesn't think it's a show stopper. Then baby doll stopped in on his way to work to hang out for a bit. My nurse for the day, Abigail, thinks he's dreamy and super sweet. ;-) Then resident Priya came in and took the drain out of my neck. Ahhhh.... now I only have 5 attachments instead of 6. She said she was also super busy getting all my meds lined up so that I could be sprung on Wed without a lot of fuss. Woo hoo! I mentioned to her that last year my neck re-infected twice after I got home and asked if there were extra measures we could take to prevent that this time. She said they would be keeping me on antibiotics thru Wed and she seemed to feel that would be enough to prevent reoccurring infection. Then the physical therapist showed up and we walked a few laps, did some stairs, and reviewed my neck exercises. Phew! It was a whirlwind morning!

I'm now sitting here quietly waiting for Abigail to come train me on suctioning my stoma. She said I have a dummy to practice on first because sticking an 18" tube down into your lungs tends to bother people. You think?! Meanwhile, I know they have Rescusi Annie for CPR training, I wonder what this one is called...

Okay, I just took a 10 minute doctor break. Dr. M just stopped in to check on the swelling in my flap. The bastard purposefully stuck a needle in my mouth to make me bleed! He said the veins looked dark which could mean too much pressure is being put on them but he said that I bleed appropriately when poked so he thinks it's just the swelling in my face causing the darkness, which is temporary. He noticed me using the iPad and said he was going to send Michelle, the speech therapist, up to see me sooner rather than later because she has an awesome iPad app that converts typing to voice. Meanwhile, he gave some different info from this morning. He wants to have me attempting to eat by Thursday or Friday so that they can spring me by the end of the week. I should know this game of mis-matched info by heart, by now. :-)

What I could really use right now are some pain meds and a nap. I only slept about 3 1/2 - 4 hours last night.

I finally remembered to pull out my Boogie Board today. It's a $20 electronic writing tablet that doesn't kill trees when I communicate. Everyone loves it! I'm the most popular kid on the block! It would seem none of these kids has seen one of these so they all want to play with it. It makes me laugh seeing doctors and nurses get excited by something so simple.

So, my funny to end with today. I asked baby doll if he could bring me a hair band because my pony is currently up with a rubberband which is going to snarl something awful. He showed up this morning and said he had an Aerosmith CD sitting on the front seat of his car that he totally meant to bring up and hand to me. He then handed me the type of hair band I was actually requesting. I'm not sure I could have found a dorkier guy on the Internet even if I had tried. ;-p














boogie board
Hair bands, Aerosmith
Farting contests
Hot dog eating contests