Coming home, walking into the house with Marty for the first time after a hospital stay always makes me want to sit down for a minute and just say, "ahhhh". Being here, pushing her into the house we have shared for 20 years, brings back a sense of control and normalcy almost immediately.
Marty always wants to take a bath before she does anything else when we come home. She wants to wash the hospital out of her hair and off her body. I don't blame her; I end up taking multiple showers daily when Marty is in the hospital.
The opposite end of the "ahh" feeling of coming home is the feeling of concern you get when you finally leave the seemingly safe and secure hospital. At the hospital you have nurses and doctors and people checking on you throughout the day. At home it's me and the girls and I have to make all of the decisions and be on hyper alert for anything that might be or go wrong for Marty. Consequently, I walk around like a German short haired pointer in the field all of the time, sniffing, looking and watching for any anomalies; I'm on point 24 hours a day.
Since our homecoming Marty is doing okay. Her arm really hurts and it looks awful; it's blue, red, green and a little yellow and swollen, it looks like she has a broken arm, oh that's right, she does. We are still trying to find the best way to move and care for Marty with the broken arm. She really did a lot for herself and I guess I never realized how much she was able to help support herself with that arm. We are learning a new way of doing some things.
I'm being easy on her (ain't I a peach) and I'm letting her stay in bed as much as she wants right now. The Keppra, the anti-seizure meds are kind of messing with her concentration and causing a moderate amount of confusion but they are not near as debilitating as I thought they might. I suspect Marty's body will become even more accustomed to the medicine over the next weeks.
Our hope remains that as the pain and swelling in her arm abates she will begin to gain more mobility and use of her right arm. We had our first appointment with her Orthopedic Surgeon today and he still feels confident she will be able to do almost all of the things she was doing prior to the break. I just want to see the pain stop, I hate hurting her; the Doctor has assured us it will stop hurting and Doctors know everything.
We are boldly moving forward one day at a time. That's about all of life we can bite off right now, and probably all any of us should try to at any one time. We are relearning some things and searching for the best ways to work around the broken arm. We will do this, we will do this just like we have done all of the other things we have had to do, we will do it together.
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