Susanne was super excited because Paxton got the okay to go home today. The goal was to get him out of there before the 12 o'clock feeding. Susanne had learned from Paxton's previous hospital stays that usually whatever time they estimated, she would need to add a few hours.
Susanne continued to inquire about how to care for Paxton's G tube. The unfortunate thing was that none of the nurses were familiar or comfortable with the type of G tube Paxton received. The day before, Susanne found a couple of videos on G tube care on the television in Paxton's room. She discovered them accidentally when she was trying to nominate one of the overnight nurses for an award for excellent patient care. She was a little upset that she had to find this on her own.
Susanne kept getting the run-around about the discharge time. The time continued to tick away. The 12 o'clock feeding came and went. She had loaded up a cart with all of her belongings earlier in the morning. She managed to take one load of stuff to the car, watch a few shows on the television, and grab a bite to eat. Finally, the nurse was ready to go over the discharge instructions. By the time she was finished, it was time for Paxton's next feeding. Susanne had to wait another hour before she could leave.
The nurse helped Susanne out to the car. She finally got on the road around 4:30pm. They were home free. It felt so good to be out of the hospital. It took them about an hour to get home. By the time they walked in the door, it was time to feed Paxton again. She was greeted with a warm welcome by James. He was so happy to see them. Susanne spent some time unloading the car and trying to weed through it all to find the things she would need to set up Paxton's next feeding. Since he had been having some difficulty with the last few G tube feedings, Susanne had been instructed to feed him over a longer period of time. This was supposed to help get him accustomed to the new set up. So far that seemed to fix the problem.
Once they got back into the swing of things, Susanne tried to get settled back in. She was looking forward to getting some sleep in her own bed. The nutritionist had adjusted Paxton's schedule so that he could be set up for a feeding that would be administered over 10 hours. This gave Susanne high hopes for an evening of rest. Once she started thinking about the length of time that the bag of breast milk would be hanging up, she thought something didn't seem right. It grossed her out to think about the bag hanging up for 10 hours without being refrigerated. She decided that she would give half of the feeding and then exchange it out for the other half mid-way through until she could check with someone about the safety of the milk being out that long.
She did not miss getting up at 3:00am at all. She resisted getting up when his pump beeped. She somehow mustered up the energy to refill the bag. She quickly realized how physically exhausted she was as well as emotionally exhausted. She continued to wonder where she got the strength to push through.
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