July 3rd- At least we had a 4 hour break from PCMC!! Rough, depressing day!!

Let's just say that today was one of those days that just really stink.  It started out great though.  Abby woke up feeling good, as good as she did most of the day yesterday, so when the docs came by to do rounds, they decided to let us go home!!! Even if her INR was only 1.8, they said it was close enough.  So they started working on all of the discharge orders.  I packed up the room and took all of the stuff out to the car, and then we just had to wait for a nurse to come from a critical care company to teach me about to administer the milrinone through the picc line.  The nurse didn't show up until about 12:30....then my "training" started.  Let's just say that I was a little freaked out.  They kept calling her picc line her "lifeline" and telling me how important it was to keep it completely clean and sterile so that no germs could get in and attack her heart.  Then I had to learn how to clean the empty 2 lumens with saline, and then flush them with Heparin.  This wasn't too hard, I was still feeling okay about things.  I just had to remember to do it every 12 hours, Abby made me write down all of the instructions they gave me....she knows how flaky I've become through all of this.  Then they taught me about the milrinone and how to work the pump, and how to change the bag, and how to put it in the pump, and how to watch for infection, and what not to do, and what to do, and how often to do it, and how vital it was I didn't screw up, and when to call the nurse, and when to come to the ER, and..........I was a little nervous, but thought I could probably handle it, all it is is medicine to keep her pumping properly, what's the big deal???  So we loaded up in the car and went home.

When we got home we got to enjoy a great meal from Olive Garden (thanks dad) and we got to talk to some friends for a few minutes too.  Then we decided we would go relax at the movies, but about an hour into it, Abby said she felt like her heart was beating really fast and really hard.  I could hear her kind of having a hard time breathing too.  We decided to to leave the movie, head home, and call the cardiologist to see what they wanted us to do.  They decided they wanted us to head on back to PCMC and check in so we could see what was going on.  So, after being home for about 4 hours, we got to come right back up here.  I'm so stupid for even unpacking when we got home.......I just had to turn around and repack everything!!

Since we've been here they've done an EKG, ran a test on her defibrillater, took blood for a metabolic panel, taken all of her vitals, and a couple of other things.  Abby feels okay again, and the docs didn't find anything too substantial.  My dad thought that her murmur sounded worse, so we'll have to have Abby's doctor check that tomorrow.  The bad news is that I'm pretty sure we will be here until Abby gets her heart now.  This just makes me want to bawl because it's so hard to be here, I know it's much harder on me than on Abby.  Abby doesn't mind it too much, but it makes me feel a little crazy.  Now we really need her heart to get here soon.  Abby's room looks so boring, I'm going to have to spice things up a little since we'll be here a while.  We will be here now until after her recovery from her transplant, so we're looking at at least 3 weeks, and that's if she got her heart tonight and had an easy, no problem transplant and recovery.  Maybe it's time for some balloons, flowers, and posters again.....I've got to do something to make it a little less depressing.  Maybe prayers tonight should be for Abby to hang in there and me to keep my sanity!!!