Gray Day

Today has been a gray day. By gray I mean a little bit of black, and a little bit of white too. Sunshine and rain, you get my drift, yes? I woke up feeling wayyyyy discouraged. Just blah. Even Roger was in that realm too. A big part of it is that we are just so very done with being in the hospital. The other part is that we really felt at a loss for a clear idea of what is going to get us on the road home.

At the height of this mental muck, it came time to shuttle me up to the Hubbard. The Hubbard is a big bathing room, sort of a hospital "spa" where they bathe you with nice warm water and sweet-smelling, yummy bath products. They also combine this with wound care, but the spa part makes it so much more bearable. I cry almost every time they bathe me. It is ultimately humbling and humanizing to be washed in this way, to be cared for at such a basic and primal level. Every time I leave the Hubbard, I feel hope. No kidding. Plus, I got there in a wheel chair, rather than a stretcher, an entirely different experience. My body is getting stronger. I don't need as much help with every single movement. I am glad for this. I need some more independence.

Even with all this new strength and independence, what will get me out of the hospital and on the road home? It all has to do with this wound. The WOUND. It's like it's a person, an entity in and of itself. A National Monument. We really should give it a name. Any suggestions? In any case, it all hinges on getting the wound healed, and this is no simple task, as it is large and deep. It cannot simply be closed up and sent on its way...they have to stimulate "granulation" from within the depths of the wound and get it to fill itself in from the bottom up. then they have to figure out how best to close things up, and this very likely means skin grafting (yay). Tomorrow, the surgical team will try to put something on my wound called a wound vac. If this is successful, it will promote a lot faster and better healing/granulation, and it will only have to get changed every three days. More importantly, it will mean I can go home a lot sooner. Much sooner. So, I am requesting from you, my dear friends and family, that you pray for the success of the wound vac tomorrow, and continued success over the coming week that will lead the docs to send me home. In that case, a home health nurse would come every three days to change it, and I will probably have to make weekly visits down here.

The secondary piece to all this, if indeed it works, is that I'll have to be able to endure all this with a lot less pain meds than I am getting currently. No IV meds, all oral. So I am requesting that you pray for that as well if you are so inclined.

Everyone keeps telling me about the "long road ahead"....another potentially named piece of my recovery? I know I am lucky. I have only to walk down the halls of this hospital to know that. I have so much on my side. But I have to say, each day is a very volatile game of emotional tug of war for me, especially being away from my children. It goes against all of my being to have them away. Fortunately, Miss Ada Pearl will be visiting today, and Gunnar and Finn will be tomorrow, before going out for a play day with their Dad. I think Roger needs it as much as they do. I have only to trust that though we are apart, we are united through bonds much bigger than I can speak of here, and that at the end of this crazy awfulness, it will be those bonds that prevail.

I thank you all for your thoughts, your words, your prayers, love and all the myriad of things you have done and given to support us during this time. It is all so very needed. I even had a group of women inside the nooks and crannies of my house on Orcas Island cleaning it from top to bottom yesterday! How embarrassing, and yet what an amazing gift--not just the cleaning but to have that group of women blessing the space to which we long to return, free from MRSA and the nightmare it brought with it.

Feeling hopeful, feeling the possibility of encouragement.