McKenzie woke up from a long nap on Wednesday January 18th, 2023 after getting into our regular room and felt pretty good. She was pretty sore all over her body, I'm thinking it was from her shivering the entire night before. At this point her memory was getting much better, which is a good and bad thing. Obviously it was a good thing because it showed that it wouldn’t be long term. It was a bad thing because she started realizing how long she had actually been in the hospital. She looked up at the nurses board and saw the date said 1/18/2023 and said “whaaat?? Is that the correct date!? I’ve been in here since December 30th, 2022!!”. I felt terrible and all I knew to do was tell her it’ll be ok, that I would be there with her and that we would only be there a few more days. I didn’t know when we’d be getting out of there, but if everything kept going smoothly I knew it couldn’t be too much longer. That afternoon shortly after Fran arrived, our friends Rem and Olivia Huggins wanted to bring by dinner for all of us, but I wasn’t sure how to say no because I knew I couldn’t bring them up to see McKenzie. Or, I should say, McKenzie would have whipped my ass if I let anybody come up and see her in that condition. When I told them that, they already knew and just wanted to come check on my well being. Once they arrived to the hospital, I went outside and got some much needed hugs and let them know the status of everything. Before they left, they opened the back of their car to grab a gift basket Olivia and their sweet friends put together, and a BIG OLE bag of Olive Garden! McKenzie loves Italian food and was so pumped when I got back to the room with the chicken Alfredo. After dinner Fran helped McKenzie get her first real shower in like 8 days! Like I said, she was getting washed daily, but no shower.

Thursday January 19th, 2023…. Last night was another night full of nurses popping in and out of the room, changing antibiotics, hooking other meds up and checking on McKenzie because of the events from the night before. Thankfully she did great after they changed her Antibiotics back to vancomycin, which is the antibiotic she’s been on pretty much the whole time we’ve been at the hospital. I went to get McKenzie and I some breakfast, cause her appetite was back and I didn’t want her to have to drink ensure or try to eat the nasty hospital food. When I got back and got her situated I was able to get some work done in my “office” that I set up in the corner of the room. I’ll try and figure out how to post a picture on here. McKenzie did great all day, she went on a few hallway walks and moved to the recliner. One of the PA’s came in to see how everything was going and told McKenzie they would try and get her out of here by the end of the weekend. That didn’t sit well with McKenzie, because she thought it was Monday for some reason and thought we’d be there for another 5 or 6 days! I told her that it was Thursday and that meant only 3 more days TOPS! Later in the afternoon Fran got there and a little bit later James came by, both just to see McKenzie and hang out for a bit. We decided we’d get some pizza and salads for dinner, and since Fran was there to be with McKenzie, I quickly offered to go pick it up with James. We went and got a beer in the Gainesville square while we waited on the pizza then headed back to the hospital. After dinner, McKenzie was getting a little upset just thinking about what all she’s been through, and what all she’s still gotta go through! It’s very overwhelming if you think about everything at one time and think about how long everything is going to take. Just gotta take things day by day and do what you can to make it through to the next. Anyways, the nurse that was on night shift knew that McKenzies spirits were down and knew that she was getting frustrated with being in bed or only being able to walk down 3 hallways. She came back in with a wheel chair, loaded McKenzie up, covered her in blankets and snuck her to the elevator. We all went down and walked with them to the “Prayer Garden”. It’s a cool little pathway with plants, flowers, water features, and some statues with prayers written on them… this was McKenzies first time outside in 19 days!! Once we returned, it was probably 9:00 pm or later and it was time for visitors to leave. At this point I wasn’t a visitor, we may even see a fee on the hospital bills for 2 people. Lol

Friday January 20th, 2023… McKenzie slept pretty well last night and when she woke up was ready for some breakfast. So I went and got her a bacon egg and cheese croissant from Burger King. That’s what she requested, that’s what she got! When I got back, she wasn’t there, so I figured she was either on a walk with the nurse or getting some scans done. Shortly after, she returned and said she just got an X-ray done. I’m pretty sure the X-rays are just seeing the fluid that is still outside her lungs, preventing her lungs from expanding all the way. Aside from her sternum being cracked open, that was another reason she wasn’t able to take a full breath or talk in full sentences without running out of breath. A little while later the PA for the day came in, it was a different one than the day before. She opened up with, “ok! What do you think about getting out of here later this afternoon or in the morning!?” It was a great opening sentence, but at this point we aren’t believing it until we see it. The PA told us that they were working on getting her antibiotics ordered so that we could have everything at home and that she needed to get with her team to look at the X-ray and notes. If all that lined up, we’d be getting out of there! We both explained to the PA that if the case manager would talk to the case manager from the Braselton hospital, any confusion on how to order the meds would be cleared up. Because remember, we went through this 2 weeks earlier before we were transferred to Gainesville. I guess after we explained that to the PA, the nurse, and the technician, word finally got back to our case manager, because she came walking into our room around 1:30pm and told us she was doing everything she could to get us out of there and that she was just waiting on McKenzies oncologist to call her back. She was told she’d get a call by 4:00 and if it was any later that she’d be calling them! So we just had to wait around for a couple more hours. Fran got there around this time, and I went down to the cafeteria to get some lunch. It was like 2:00 pm and kind of in between their weird hours. The lady setting up one of the food lines told me she’d be open at 3:30. So since Fran was there, I just went and got some Chipotle. When I got back, it was getting close to that 4:00 pm mark and we knew the case manager left at 4:30. So we were getting anxious to hear what the plan was, because if it didn’t happen today, we didn’t have much hope that we’d get discharged on a Saturday. I started packing everything in the room up, because I was going to be ready to get the heck out of there as soon as they said go. FINALLY, the nurse came in with a packet in her hand and gave us the good news! We were being discharged!!! McKenzie had mixed emotions, so happy that she’d be going home, but nervous about anything happening to her after we left. The nurse told us that the take home IV antibiotics would be delivered to McKenzies parents house before 10:00 pm that same night. I was already taking a load of bags down to my car and pulling it up to the entrance, or the EXIT in this case! When I got back to the room, it was time to go! We were leaving the hospital about 10 after 5 on January 20th 2023! About 5 minutes after leaving, Ron text me and asked how McKenzie was doing and if there were any updates on discharge. Fran and McKenzie wanted to surprise him, so I had to ignore the text and wait to give him an update after the 25 minute car ride to their house.

Once we got their, we went straight downstairs to surprise Ron, it was awesome! I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ron so happy. So, good feelings all around!! Then I remembered that I’d be the one administering the antibiotics and totally forgot what time her last IV was and we have to give it to her every 12 hours. I ended up calling the hospital and asking what time her nurse gave her the antibiotic and was told 2:15 pm. This meant that I had to hook her up at 2:15 am. The medicine arrived around 9:00 pm, and I read through all the papers that came with it and started setting everything up for our 2:15 am administration. 

I just stayed awake and made sure everything was in line for my nurse duties. When the time came, I had no problems at all. It was just as easy as when the paragon lady came and taught us 2 weeks prior. Once I had her hooked up, I knew it would be empty in about an hour and a half and didn’t want to leave her hooked up and risk any clotting or anything. So at 3:45 I unhooked her, flushed her PICC line and then flushed it again with heparin. No idea what heparin is, but I do know that it’s the last step before putting the cap on her PICC line. Yippeeee! Successful first at home antibiotic and finally time for some sleep. I went to sleep, when I woke up at like 9, I made some breakfast, hung around for a bit and came back in the bedroom. I fell asleep again around 1:00pm, and of course didn’t set an alarm for her 2:15pm IV. So I woke back up at 3:00 freaking out because I thought I messed up bad. Thankfully McKenzie told me not to worry, that the nurses did that all the time. I think as long as she’s getting the IV 2 times a day and keeps her vanc levels pretty even, then it’s all ok. 

The next day Sunday January 22nd, 2023 I knew we had to head back to Nashville so that we could try and get back on some sort of regular schedule. We didn’t end up leaving until about 5:30 pm and at this point we pushed the times of her antibiotics back to now, that way I could wake up for work, give her the antibiotics and by the time I’m done with work I could give her the evening meds. So I hooked her up to the antibiotics and we took off back to Nashville, 3.5 weeks since McKenzie had been home, and she was only home for 3 days before that. 

This week has been pretty busy trying to do everything that the nurses were doing for McKenzie, plus being back at my home office and trying to get in the zone to actually get work done, instead of doing what felt like the bare minimum to get by. I know I had a lot on my plate, but also had a job that people rely on me for. McKenzie has been doing good this week, she’s been doing her breathing treatments and today January 26th, 2023 she hit another milestone on her breathing spirometer. She has doubled what she was getting on Monday and Tuesday!! 

Tomorrow we have an appointment with Dr. Mitchell to get McKenzie’s PICC line redressed, take a bunch of blood samples, get the next weeks antibiotics and see what’s next!