Karen and I both had allergies in the hospital. One of the nurses complained about it too. I'm not sure if it's from the smelly bouquet of flowers they always had out there, or if there's just a lot of outside air getting in. This caused a new issue with Karen's NG tube. Her nose was runny, and mucus would drip down the front of the tube. She had to constantly wipe her nose. My guess is while sleeping the snot was running the other direction, down the back of her throat. She started to get a little bit of a cough these last few days, and last night while trying to sleep she kept choking on the tube. She finally had to ask them to take it out. She likes to be cautious about removing the tube since she hates having it reinserted, but she just kept waking up choking.
The day got off to a slow start. Karen followed the same liquid diet for breakfast; on a liquid diet all meals are pretty much the same. The doctor who we had expected to
argue talk with about moving up to solid foods didn't show up in the morning. We asked the nurse about it and she said that particular doctor usually visits in the afternoon instead of the morning. We were worried we wouldn't get a chance to order solid food for lunch, so we had the nurse contact the doctor to see if we could move up. We didn't really know if they'd OK it, but they did. And Karen got solid food for lunch: some kind of gluten free noodles, and some intentionally over cooked veggies.
The doctor stopped in to see us around 2pm. She asked Karen if she had any more bowel movements, and she had - earlier in the morning. Then she asked how the solid food went down and how Karen was feeling. And then told us she had already put the discharge through before stopping in to see us. We were both pretty surprised about this as everything had been moving so slowly this time. We were signing release papers by 2:30 and packed and on our way home by 3. When we got home we both fell asleep. What an exhausting visit to the hospital.
