Take the long way home

Well, well, well. After all that messing around on Tuesday, they let the boy go home last night. Not as great as you might imagine after a month in hospital.

After some helpful chasing by nurses on the ward, the respiratory team did turn up. They say that the CT scan is inconclusive. It shows some problem with a lobe of one lung but it is not clear whether it represents the end of the chest infection or chronic long-term damage. They have said that we need to try, at least for the time being, to protect his lung by putting the trachy cuff up whenever his secretions are significant - which is most of the time at the moment.

The doctors concluded that they are not going to treat his e.coli infection and hope that it will clear by itself before the chemo reduces his neutrophils too much. Let's hope they're right.

Having done all that, they decided that he could go home. Inevitably, this is decided at lunchtime. But it takes the rest of the afternoon to sort out medicines to take home, get a discharge letter prepared and organise transport (we'd do the latter ourselves but since he went to hospital in an ambulance and we didn't expect it today, we have no car seat).

The boy eventually got home at just before 7.00pm. Happy to help unpack for a bit but tired quickly and wanted to watch TV. Was very unhapy to have a bath. So much so that he said he didn't want to be home. He wanted to go back to hospital. Was a very difficult bath and tape change. Everyone's temper frayed and coming home felt just another battle to fight. No benefit to being home. Rather depressing end to the day.