Colby, Dad and I hit the road for Cincy Monday afternoon. Mom came over and helped me get Colby up, get the van packed, etc. My goal was to leave at 3:00 and we were pulling out of the parking lot at 3:01, impressive. We drove to the north side of Cincy. Found our hotel. Unpacked, set up Colby's equipment, rested for a bit. I got the bright idea to go down to the hotel restaurant for a bite of supper. Loaded Colby back up in his chair and headed to the bistro. This proved to be a bad idea on my part. There were a few very nasty, very drunk, obnoxious, dirty old men sitting at the bar. Hey, I know drunk and obnoxious when I see it, just sayin. They were making many loud, sexual comments. Hitting on the females who came into the bar. Usually I wouldn't give such behavior a second thought, but it was very uncomfortable considering I was with my dad and son! The bartender was a complete asshat. Her waitressing skills were mediocre at best, took us forever to get a stupid salad and a quesadilla. Plus she didn't have enough gumption to ask the loudmouths to tone it down a little. Pitiful.
But anyway, we all got a good night's sleep. Got up yesterday, checked out of the hotel and headed for Colby's first round of appointments. At this location he had spine x-rays and met again with the ortho surgeon who is doing his VEPTR surgery next month. The x-rays were interesting. Not an easy task to get Colby sitting up against the wall, without his back brace on, to get spine x-rays. Ortho dr says Colby's spine isn't actually "too bad" whatever that means, and this is a really good time to be doing this surgery. That was nice to hear. Loaded Colby in the van again, drove to the main Cincinnati Children's campus for more pre-surgery appointments. Met with the nutritionist, then the neurologist who has been following Colby for several years now. She only had good, positive things to say about Colby, and she has okayed Colby's surgery from a neurological standpoint. Yay I guess?? She was very pleased that we decided to trach Colby. She was impressed about the quality of his skin, no breakdown or sores, and was super duper impressed with our PT efforts, i.e. no severe contractures. She also had only good/great things to say about the ortho surgeon so that put my mind at ease a little, like 5% or so maybe.
Colby was supposed to also get a MRSA screening and labs drawn yesterday. I won't go into the details, let's just say neither happened. The ortho nurse went to great lengths to make sure people in Neurology and the VAT knew what the crap was going on in order to get Colby's port accessed and labs drawn, but yep, somehow, some way, it got jacked up and didn't happen. I was irritated, but believe it or not, I didn't throw one of my usual, you-better-find-someone-who-can-get-this-fixed-and-get-it-fixed-now fits. I was amazingly cool about it, but ONLY because we make another trip to Cincy for pre-surgery appointments in a couple of weeks, and I figured we could get the screening and labs done then. Man, the ortho nurse was hot today when I told her what happened. She gave me a list of the labs needed. So I can guarantee Colby's labs will get drawn next visit, or somebody's butt will get mounted on her/my wall(s).
Left the hospital at 5:freaking:30. Not only did we hit afternoon Cincy traffic, we also ran into storms, bad storms. Thunder, lightening, hail, horrible rain, at 2 different times on the way home. It was awful. I did some major backseat praying. I was like please Lord just let us get our tired butts home safely, which we did thankfully. We got Colby inside and unloaded about 10 minutes before it started storming here at home. Yesterday was a hard, exhausting day of travelling and Colby appointments. I'm glad that one is under our belt finally.
Having nursing issues still, but I guess I'll wrap up for now and blog about that tomorrow. Later, taters.
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