Friends/family,
Hello! I'm sorry I haven't posted for a few days, we were trying to have a "normal" 4th of July weekend. I've been encouraging Brent to start updating the blog now as well. :)
Brent is recovering very well - I have been able to take him out on some short errands with me in a wheelchair, which is nice. He has been taking 3 walks/day and has had no complications so far! After his last surgery, around week 2 was when he got sick. We're 12 days post-op and no problems thus far! He's been sleeping about 6 hours/night and hasn't had as many nightmares as in the past. He had his blood levels drawn on Thursday and again today and everything is normal. Overall, I think he's doing great!
I think I am still experiencing what it's like to have an infant - my sleep schedule is still regulated by his, lots of laundry, I clean the house daily to help ward off infection, help him with bathing/dressing, feed him, etc. I will be most excited when Brent can pour his own water again and put on a shirt by himself. :) I spent a lot of time filling up his water bottle and dressing him. Thank God people are bringing us food because by evening time, I have no energy left to cook and then do all dishes. I miss Brent being able to help out with the dishes!
So Thursday, we went and had Brent's labs drawn, took pictures of tons of furniture we need to sell, and went and looked at new couches. We are hoping to buy a new couch with the money we make from selling old furniture. Brent has to sit on a couch for 8 weeks and mine is horribly uncomfortable. Since neither of us are currently receiving income, we have to sell a ton of furniture before buying anything new. I think we both had fun wheeling him around and getting out of the house for a bit. Thursday night, some wonderful friends' of ours brought us over sushi from our favorite sushi place and fro-yo for dessert! It was SO nice of them and we had so much fun hanging out and catching up. Brent and I are such social people - we have really appreciated all of the visits from our friends both in San Diego and at the hospital! The same couple also brought us lunch on Friday - which was amazing. :)
Friday was an exciting day - even though we spent most of the day at home - because our awesome dogsitter/close friend brought Sadie home to us! The best part is she took her to get a bath first and then brought her home. Sadie was nice and clean and so happy to see us. Now we call her the "recovery dog" because Brent is so happy around her. It's also more fun taking the daily Brent walks with our dog. She just makes us smile and keeps us happy. It was nice to hang out with our friend on Friday during the day too - she took such great care of Sadie, we were so appreciative! It was such a relief in the hospital to not have to worry about Sadie - and she even would send us pictures of Sadie every once in while to keep our spirits up. Having a dogsitter that loves your dog as much as you do is amazing.
Friday evening, we ordered pizza and had another visit from a great friend - and she brought us yummy popsicles! We are so appreciative of people bringing us food/treats. I have no desire to cook right now or go to the grocery store - taking care of Brent is more than enough to wear me out. :) We hung out Friday for a little bit and then Brent went to bed, but my friend stayed and we ended up talking for hours. It was very therapeutic and wonderful to have some girl time. I really needed some friend time on Friday and it was so nice to talk with all of our visitors.
So for the 4th of July, we mostly hung out at home and watched movies/tv all day. It was good to rest and relax all day, but we're both already getting pretty bored at home. We're such an active couple; it's so hard to sit at home all the time - but we've gotta get used to it! I'm a little curious how God is going to use Brent's time over the next 8 weeks. After his last surgery, he planned a softball tournament that raised over $10,000 for the Adult Congenital Heart Association! On Saturday night, we actually grilled out and then I put Brent in the wheelchair and wheeled him about half a mile down to our friends' condo to watch the fireworks. Our friends live in an amazing condo with a great view of all of the fireworks over the bay of San Diego. It was so nice to be able to get out and socialize and feel somewhat normal on the 4th! I was so glad they invited us over. It was a good day, but of course we were wishing we could've gone to the beach and spent the day outside. It's been so gorgeous in San Diego lately - the weather definitely wasn't this nice in June when Brent was ok. Hopefully the nice weather will continue into the fall and we can have fun at the beach then.
Sunday and Monday has been more of the same, running a few errands and mostly hanging out at home, sleeping and staring at the TV. We have already sold a lot of furniture, so that's exciting - we're one step closer to our new couch! Sadie is back to her old routine - but I think she loves having us around all the time. She's lucky because Brent will be home with her for quite some time - poor dog will be in shock when he goes back to work in late August. :)
As far as the wedding, it's been a topic of much discussion the past few days. I think it's a depressing topic for both of us - and likely why I haven't posted in a few days - which is not how weddings should be. This is supposed to be a happy, exciting time - and it's been hard to smile! The truth is, we never imagined we'd be changing our wedding date after all of the hard work. I have put a lot of effort into planning our wedding and I am just kind of in shock and depressed I have to re-plan everything. I spent 3 weeks and at least 150 hours hand-making our wedding invitations - I can't believe all of my endless cutting, printing, gluing, tying, arranging - all 170 invitations went out with a date that's not our wedding date - a date that will now be a sad day. There are countless other things we've discussed that have "our" date on them that isn't now our wedding date. It's just so disappointing for both of us. Luckily, Brent will definitely be helping me more this time around since he'll be at home while I am working. :) We need to make the final decision about the date and I think both of us are having a very hard time just making that final decision and moving forward. We're very upset about "losing" so many guests that won't be able to make our wedding with a new date and also feel horrible for our friends that have to change their plane tickets and pay extraordinary change fees. We're really going to put some of our friends in a bad financial situation and we feel so guilty about that. It's an extremely tough decision - but Brent simply won't be recovered enough in 4 weeks to enjoy our wedding and honeymoon. We keep saying "tomorrow we'll start making arrangements" - but we keep putting it off. So maybe tomorrow, we really will start moving forward...
One of the most depressing things about putting the wedding off is that I will have to take the fall semester off from grad school. I've spent the past 2 years working so hard with being a full-time grad school student and working 2 jobs - there have been countless nights when I only got a few hours of sleep because school was so overwhelming and 24 hours just wasn't enough time in one day. I am SO close to being done - I've spent so much money on grad school and now I have to put school on hold and we don't know for how long. I have started looking into transferring with not much luck, but we'll see what happens. Maybe some school, somewhere in the country will give me a break. I don't know if there will be a "slot" for me in the spring to continue at my current school and as time goes on, if you don't finish, you start losing credits. What we're going through is not fun, but I keep trying to remind myself I have the rest of my life to finish school - even if I have to completely start over and have to take out more student loans - and we only get one wedding/honeymoon.
Please continue to pray for Brent's recovery. I truly believe he's doing so well because of all of the prayers. It's crazy to think he had open-heart surgery just 12 days ago. Please don't "forget' about us either. We still need help, support, and prayers. I think we're struggling a bit now with all of the hard decisions we have to make about the wedding and our future. We both tend to get upset at night and it makes it hard to face the next day. We're trying to keep our spirits up, but it has been harder lately - now the adrenaline is all gone and we're back to facing life and the changes we face after his open-heart surgery. Please continue to pray for strength for us both, healing for Brent, and that God will really show us His will for our lives and our future.
We really appreciate the continued support and we're praying simply for happiness and normalcy now.
God bless,
~Rachel
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Movies and more movies
Friends/family,
Today was very calm compared to the past week - and it was a great Wednesday compared to last Wednesday! :) I realized I'll be watching a lot of tv and movies over the next 6 weeks. Sitting on the couch is a weird concept for Brent and I. Our relationship has always been built around being outdoors and active and over-committed. Brent's cardiologist told me once that Brent is a typical congenital heart disease patient: an overachiever and a go-getter. I don't think either one of us knows how to sit still! I'm kind of excited to see how God is going to use Brent's time during this recovery - I know God's got something big planned! I have to keep reminding Brent to slow down, sit still, nap, stop trying to help, etc. I think it's very weird for him to just sit around and watch me do everything - and I have to admit, sometimes it's hard doing everything alone. I keep telling him I am starting to understand what new mom's go through - endless amounts of laundry, constant cleaning, bathing, cooking/dishes, waiting on someone all the time, no sleep, etc. :) But we do enjoy being able to spend so much time together and we're getting in a lot of quality time on the couch watching movies! It's a big difference from our normal, stressed out, over-committed lives - perhaps we both needed to slow down a little bit. I wish God could've slowed us down differently though - maybe next time not with a heart surgery. ;)
As a side note, it's horrible not being able to hug Brent after everything that has happened. We have to sit on different sides of the couch so I don't move him too much when I move and thus cause him pain - and then at night I help him into my bed and can't even halfway hug him - I just kiss him on the forehead and hope he sleeps. I need to ask the surgeon when we can hug again! :( It's not fun being so close and not being able to even hug. I never imagined my first few weeks of living with Brent would be 1. unmarried 2. we'd be unable to hug and 3. I'd be sleeping on my couch. :)
Today was nice because we slept in (ok, I slept in - apparently Brent woke up at like 6:00 am) and then we basically did nothing all day. We discussed wedding plans, the changing of wedding plans, and how our futures would be impacted. Tomorrow we have the daunting task of calling Delta and seeing if we can convince them to waive all of our friend's change fees for so many tickets that have already been booked from San Diego and Chicago. I think it's a long shot, but you never know. We are very anxious about putting all of our friends that already booked tickets in a bad situation with change fees and increased fares, so we're going to try the sob-story tomorrow over the phone and see what happens. Anyways - we watched a lot of TV and movies today - and I decided I'll start running again tomorrow (by myself - sniffle) or I'm going to go nuts and get fat sitting here. I think Brent is to the point where I can leave him for an hour and he'll be ok, so thank God for that!
We also had some visitors this afternoon, which was so nice! My boss and his wife came over to help me with a few things around the house and to bring Brent a recliner to sit more comfortably in. Brent is much more comfortable reclining - he can't lie flat nor is it very comfortable for him to sit up straight. We were both very happy to have a recliner for him to use for a few weeks. After that, our "San Diego Mom" came over with food and a wedding gift! San Diego Mom is a very sweet woman that we both served with at the Rock Church 2 years ago. She knew way before Brent did how much I liked him and I still remember emailing her about our first few dates and we were both so excited. :) It was so nice of her to bring over food because I certainly don't feel like cooking or even going to the grocery store - and it's so nice to be taken care of! Normally I love to cook - it's very therapeutic - but I'm still a little tired from the whole ordeal and it's so easy to just throw something in the microwave or oven. I was very grateful for both of the visits we had today - it's great to see familiar faces!
So tonight we just ate dinner and watched a movie...which will probably be how most nights are. :) Brent felt very good today - which is amazing one week post-op. He did have some pain and naturally he's uncomfortable - but he keeps telling me he feels great and is recovering so well. Praise God! I can't believe how different I feel today than I did just one week ago. I'm so happy he's ok and is doing so amazing thus far. Something tells me in another week or two, he'll also be stir-crazy. Poor guy has a lot of time spend sitting at home in front of him. :) As I said though, I'm excited to see how God will use this time.
Please continue to keep Brent in your prayers - tonight I ask for peaceful sleep and rest for Brent. He did have a nightmare earlier - I was sitting here typing away and I heard him mumbling. I went in to ask him what was wrong and found him sitting up on the side of the bed. I don't think I ever quite woke him up completely even though he was sitting up and talking to me. He was really sweaty so I wiped him off and put him back to sleep because his talking was making no sense. Luckily he's still sleeping, but it was a bizarre experience. Please also pray God will guide us over the next few days about what to do regarding our wedding.
Thanks for the continued thoughts/prayers; we truly appreciate you all!
~Rachel
Today was very calm compared to the past week - and it was a great Wednesday compared to last Wednesday! :) I realized I'll be watching a lot of tv and movies over the next 6 weeks. Sitting on the couch is a weird concept for Brent and I. Our relationship has always been built around being outdoors and active and over-committed. Brent's cardiologist told me once that Brent is a typical congenital heart disease patient: an overachiever and a go-getter. I don't think either one of us knows how to sit still! I'm kind of excited to see how God is going to use Brent's time during this recovery - I know God's got something big planned! I have to keep reminding Brent to slow down, sit still, nap, stop trying to help, etc. I think it's very weird for him to just sit around and watch me do everything - and I have to admit, sometimes it's hard doing everything alone. I keep telling him I am starting to understand what new mom's go through - endless amounts of laundry, constant cleaning, bathing, cooking/dishes, waiting on someone all the time, no sleep, etc. :) But we do enjoy being able to spend so much time together and we're getting in a lot of quality time on the couch watching movies! It's a big difference from our normal, stressed out, over-committed lives - perhaps we both needed to slow down a little bit. I wish God could've slowed us down differently though - maybe next time not with a heart surgery. ;)
As a side note, it's horrible not being able to hug Brent after everything that has happened. We have to sit on different sides of the couch so I don't move him too much when I move and thus cause him pain - and then at night I help him into my bed and can't even halfway hug him - I just kiss him on the forehead and hope he sleeps. I need to ask the surgeon when we can hug again! :( It's not fun being so close and not being able to even hug. I never imagined my first few weeks of living with Brent would be 1. unmarried 2. we'd be unable to hug and 3. I'd be sleeping on my couch. :)
Today was nice because we slept in (ok, I slept in - apparently Brent woke up at like 6:00 am) and then we basically did nothing all day. We discussed wedding plans, the changing of wedding plans, and how our futures would be impacted. Tomorrow we have the daunting task of calling Delta and seeing if we can convince them to waive all of our friend's change fees for so many tickets that have already been booked from San Diego and Chicago. I think it's a long shot, but you never know. We are very anxious about putting all of our friends that already booked tickets in a bad situation with change fees and increased fares, so we're going to try the sob-story tomorrow over the phone and see what happens. Anyways - we watched a lot of TV and movies today - and I decided I'll start running again tomorrow (by myself - sniffle) or I'm going to go nuts and get fat sitting here. I think Brent is to the point where I can leave him for an hour and he'll be ok, so thank God for that!
We also had some visitors this afternoon, which was so nice! My boss and his wife came over to help me with a few things around the house and to bring Brent a recliner to sit more comfortably in. Brent is much more comfortable reclining - he can't lie flat nor is it very comfortable for him to sit up straight. We were both very happy to have a recliner for him to use for a few weeks. After that, our "San Diego Mom" came over with food and a wedding gift! San Diego Mom is a very sweet woman that we both served with at the Rock Church 2 years ago. She knew way before Brent did how much I liked him and I still remember emailing her about our first few dates and we were both so excited. :) It was so nice of her to bring over food because I certainly don't feel like cooking or even going to the grocery store - and it's so nice to be taken care of! Normally I love to cook - it's very therapeutic - but I'm still a little tired from the whole ordeal and it's so easy to just throw something in the microwave or oven. I was very grateful for both of the visits we had today - it's great to see familiar faces!
So tonight we just ate dinner and watched a movie...which will probably be how most nights are. :) Brent felt very good today - which is amazing one week post-op. He did have some pain and naturally he's uncomfortable - but he keeps telling me he feels great and is recovering so well. Praise God! I can't believe how different I feel today than I did just one week ago. I'm so happy he's ok and is doing so amazing thus far. Something tells me in another week or two, he'll also be stir-crazy. Poor guy has a lot of time spend sitting at home in front of him. :) As I said though, I'm excited to see how God will use this time.
Please continue to keep Brent in your prayers - tonight I ask for peaceful sleep and rest for Brent. He did have a nightmare earlier - I was sitting here typing away and I heard him mumbling. I went in to ask him what was wrong and found him sitting up on the side of the bed. I don't think I ever quite woke him up completely even though he was sitting up and talking to me. He was really sweaty so I wiped him off and put him back to sleep because his talking was making no sense. Luckily he's still sleeping, but it was a bizarre experience. Please also pray God will guide us over the next few days about what to do regarding our wedding.
Thanks for the continued thoughts/prayers; we truly appreciate you all!
~Rachel
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Home sweet home
Friends/family,
We're home! But we'll get to that in a few minutes... :-)
Today started off as another early morning in the hospital, but we were slightly anxious this morning because we knew the morning lab draw would determine the outcome of our day. We were actually excited when the lab lady came and woke us up to draw Brent's labs! We goofed off with the nurse for awhile this morning, unable to go back to sleep because we really wanted to go home. Once Brent's labs were drawn, we must've asked the nurse 3 times what his INR was. Finally she comes walking in and casually says "Ok, your lab test results are back and your INR was 1.9." We both let out a loud "YESSSSS!" and were SO excited! I'm pretty sure the nurse thought we were very weird until we explained to her that 1.9 was the magic number and that we'd been in the hospital for 9 days and really wanted to go home and move past all of this. The cardiologist told us on Monday that he wanted Brent's INR to jump from 1.3 on Monday to at least 1.9 on Tuesday before he could be discharged - so we knew there was a VERY good chance we'd be leaving the hospital today. After awhile, Megan (Nurse Practitioner) came in and told us she also thought we'd be leaving today and brought us some discharge information. Brent said to me "That's 2 out of 3 doctors, we're totally busting out of here today!" Finally the surgeon came in and said "Everything looks good, we can go ahead and let you go." I can't even begin to describe how relieved we were. Brent still has a long recovery ahead of him, but we wanted to be home. No more IV's, no more machines, no more measuring everything - just time to relax and recover (for both of us now - I do need to catch up on sleep!)
We hung out at the hospital for a little bit longer, and around 12:30 we were discharged. Brent's nurse the past 2 days gave me a hug and wished us well - we really bonded with a few of the nurses on the Telemetry floor at the hospital. We spent 5 nights recovering there and encountered some amazing nurses - according to Brent, they were much better nurses than he'd ever had! I like to think it's because I won them over empathizing with them about nursing. ;-) I also think the nurses are always pleasantly surprised to have a younger heart surgery patient - most of their patients are older, more complicated, more demanding, and don't recover as quickly as the younger congenital heart patients. Overall, considering the circumstances, we made the best of our hospital experience and I think Brent really put a smile on so many of the staff's faces - either through his positive personality or his delirium from pain pills. :-) That being said, we were SO incredibly happy to get in my car and come back to San Diego. Brent called a few friends on the drive home and told them he was "out of jail" finally. It really must have felt like that for him - he didn't go outside for a week!
We got back to the house around 3:00 (after stopping and picking up prescriptions and Brent's mail at his house.) Brent watched a movie and I brought everything in and started tidying up. I had a maid service come deep clean and scrub down my house last Saturday in preparation for our return - I'd never used a maid service before because I can't really afford it and I don't generally mind cleaning - but WOW is the house clean! It is definitely worth every penny - anything to help make sure Brent doesn't get sick and has the fastest possible recovery. My dog Sadie (actually she's Brent's dog now as well!) is still staying with our amazing petsitter and she'll be getting a bath and then coming back to join us on Friday - after Brent can get settled in for a few days. The nurse practitioner told us we could have a dog around as soon as we wanted, but we decided to wait a few days - Brent loves Sadie so much and I know he wants to see her, but I want him to rest a few more days.
We also had some amazing cards and packages waiting for us upon our return to the house. Brent's Grandma sent me the most thoughtful, touching card that made us both tear up! She sent me a sweet note and also included a picture of Brent with his family in 2001 at his cousin's wedding. On the back, there was a brief story of 3 dates from Brent's 6th open-heart surgery in 2001 to help encourage me which said: "May 24th - surgery, May 28th - home from hospital, June 9th - cousin's wedding." After Brent's 6th open-heart surgery, he was celebrating at his cousin's wedding 2 weeks later! It was so touching and reminded me of how quickly Brent recovers from surgeries. Grandma also included an amazing story about Brent's dad (Rick) and how he first noticed Brent was turning blue as a baby and alerted the medical staff - and so Brent's heart surgery saga began in 1982. She included a full-page drawing that Rick had mailed to her that showed his notes and pictures of a normal heart and what Brent's heart looked like. To us, it was the neatest drawing we'd ever seen of a heart and we want to get it framed! Unfortunately, Brent's dad passed away 6 years ago and having notes like that from Brent's birth and memories of his dad is such a cool thing to both of us. We were so very touched by Grandma's notes - and it made me think the little notes and memories I hold on to can truly be so amazing to someone else some day. I have a piece of paper that I kept after this hospital stay - while Brent was still intubated in the ICU, he kept writing me notes because he couldn't talk and he wanted to communicate with me. He filled up both sides of the paper while still under anesthesia and inttubated! Most of the writing is illegible but I remember what it says and how much it means to me.
Brent also received a gift from one of his close friends in Illinois that made him cry (he's totally going to kill me when he reads this, but it was SO sweet!) I went to grab some stuff from the car and when I came back in, Brent was sniffling. I was pretty concerned because the doctors kept telling me sometimes post-heart surgery patients get depressed from the overwhelming experience of having heart surgery and having to rest at home for so long, so I was thinking "Oh no, now he's sad...I'm sad...what're we going to do now!?" I asked him what was wrong and he said it was "a good thing" and he handed me a sweet note from a close friend of his. His friend had gotten him cufflinks for Brent to wear on our wedding day - airplane wings with Brent's dad's initials engraved on them. (Brent's dad was a pilot.) His friend thought he might like the gift a little early and I have to say, even though then we were both crying, it was the sweetest thing ever. It made Brent so happy to know he has such amazing friends who have been so supportive, caring, and thoughtful throughout his many heart surgeries! Brent's dad used to always be right by his side during his surgeries and always made sure Brent recovered well - he's told me a lot of stories about his childhood and his dad being right there with him in the hospital or at doctor's appointments. I'm also sure Brent's sad his dad won't get to see him get married, but we both know he's up in heaven smiling at him and he must be SO proud of Brent and how strong he is! The gifts we got today were just so sweet and made our homecoming that much better!
We also received a card and some date night money from my parents. Since we deserved a "date", I asked Brent what he wanted me to pick up for dinner for his first non-hospital meal and he immediately responded "Thai food!" (I was hoping for sushi, but I didn't just have heart surgery and Thai food is pretty darn good!) I made Brent shower (it had been 9 days - yuck!) and then we enjoyed delicious Thai take-out for dinner and watched a movie. He actually stayed awake for the entire movie! It was so wonderful because for a few hours, I forgot everything we'd been through the past 12 days and I felt like it was a regular date night! Brent really is recovering so well and I am SO grateful how good God has been to us through all of this. While we still don't understand why he needed surgery again so soon and why it happened right before our wedding, we both know there's a reason and have so much to be thankful for now.
So now Brent is peacefully sleeping all propped up in my bed. I know it sounds crazy, but I am super excited to be sleeping on my couch tonight! My couch is actually very comfortable, especially compared to the chair I was sleeping in at the hospital! :) I'll finally be able to get some much needed rest - and I know Brent will sleep a lot better here than he was sleeping in the hospital, which is a huge blessing.
There was also much discussion today about our wedding date/honeymoon and what we should do. We are still so torn and are not sure what to do, but we are leaning towards pushing it back about 4 weeks. It's a very tough decicion and one that's hard to make because Brent seems to be recovering so well and ideally I don't want to put off grad school - but Brent's health is #1 priority right now, so if he will enjoy our wedding day and honeymoon more a bit later, than I don't much care about grad school for now. My degree will be finished eventually! :-) We will decide within a week and I promise we'll let everyone know ASAP what we decide and how to proceed with travel plans, rsvp's, etc. Thank you so much for your patience regarding our wedding day situation - it's not ideal by any means, we would love to be going forth with everything as planned, it just is starting to seem less and less reasonable.
Thank you for your continued thoughts and prayers - if you live in San Diego, feel free to come visit us now! Brent is now staying at my house near downtown San Diego, so call me if you would like to come by!
God bless,
Rachel
We're home! But we'll get to that in a few minutes... :-)
Today started off as another early morning in the hospital, but we were slightly anxious this morning because we knew the morning lab draw would determine the outcome of our day. We were actually excited when the lab lady came and woke us up to draw Brent's labs! We goofed off with the nurse for awhile this morning, unable to go back to sleep because we really wanted to go home. Once Brent's labs were drawn, we must've asked the nurse 3 times what his INR was. Finally she comes walking in and casually says "Ok, your lab test results are back and your INR was 1.9." We both let out a loud "YESSSSS!" and were SO excited! I'm pretty sure the nurse thought we were very weird until we explained to her that 1.9 was the magic number and that we'd been in the hospital for 9 days and really wanted to go home and move past all of this. The cardiologist told us on Monday that he wanted Brent's INR to jump from 1.3 on Monday to at least 1.9 on Tuesday before he could be discharged - so we knew there was a VERY good chance we'd be leaving the hospital today. After awhile, Megan (Nurse Practitioner) came in and told us she also thought we'd be leaving today and brought us some discharge information. Brent said to me "That's 2 out of 3 doctors, we're totally busting out of here today!" Finally the surgeon came in and said "Everything looks good, we can go ahead and let you go." I can't even begin to describe how relieved we were. Brent still has a long recovery ahead of him, but we wanted to be home. No more IV's, no more machines, no more measuring everything - just time to relax and recover (for both of us now - I do need to catch up on sleep!)
We hung out at the hospital for a little bit longer, and around 12:30 we were discharged. Brent's nurse the past 2 days gave me a hug and wished us well - we really bonded with a few of the nurses on the Telemetry floor at the hospital. We spent 5 nights recovering there and encountered some amazing nurses - according to Brent, they were much better nurses than he'd ever had! I like to think it's because I won them over empathizing with them about nursing. ;-) I also think the nurses are always pleasantly surprised to have a younger heart surgery patient - most of their patients are older, more complicated, more demanding, and don't recover as quickly as the younger congenital heart patients. Overall, considering the circumstances, we made the best of our hospital experience and I think Brent really put a smile on so many of the staff's faces - either through his positive personality or his delirium from pain pills. :-) That being said, we were SO incredibly happy to get in my car and come back to San Diego. Brent called a few friends on the drive home and told them he was "out of jail" finally. It really must have felt like that for him - he didn't go outside for a week!
We got back to the house around 3:00 (after stopping and picking up prescriptions and Brent's mail at his house.) Brent watched a movie and I brought everything in and started tidying up. I had a maid service come deep clean and scrub down my house last Saturday in preparation for our return - I'd never used a maid service before because I can't really afford it and I don't generally mind cleaning - but WOW is the house clean! It is definitely worth every penny - anything to help make sure Brent doesn't get sick and has the fastest possible recovery. My dog Sadie (actually she's Brent's dog now as well!) is still staying with our amazing petsitter and she'll be getting a bath and then coming back to join us on Friday - after Brent can get settled in for a few days. The nurse practitioner told us we could have a dog around as soon as we wanted, but we decided to wait a few days - Brent loves Sadie so much and I know he wants to see her, but I want him to rest a few more days.
We also had some amazing cards and packages waiting for us upon our return to the house. Brent's Grandma sent me the most thoughtful, touching card that made us both tear up! She sent me a sweet note and also included a picture of Brent with his family in 2001 at his cousin's wedding. On the back, there was a brief story of 3 dates from Brent's 6th open-heart surgery in 2001 to help encourage me which said: "May 24th - surgery, May 28th - home from hospital, June 9th - cousin's wedding." After Brent's 6th open-heart surgery, he was celebrating at his cousin's wedding 2 weeks later! It was so touching and reminded me of how quickly Brent recovers from surgeries. Grandma also included an amazing story about Brent's dad (Rick) and how he first noticed Brent was turning blue as a baby and alerted the medical staff - and so Brent's heart surgery saga began in 1982. She included a full-page drawing that Rick had mailed to her that showed his notes and pictures of a normal heart and what Brent's heart looked like. To us, it was the neatest drawing we'd ever seen of a heart and we want to get it framed! Unfortunately, Brent's dad passed away 6 years ago and having notes like that from Brent's birth and memories of his dad is such a cool thing to both of us. We were so very touched by Grandma's notes - and it made me think the little notes and memories I hold on to can truly be so amazing to someone else some day. I have a piece of paper that I kept after this hospital stay - while Brent was still intubated in the ICU, he kept writing me notes because he couldn't talk and he wanted to communicate with me. He filled up both sides of the paper while still under anesthesia and inttubated! Most of the writing is illegible but I remember what it says and how much it means to me.
Brent also received a gift from one of his close friends in Illinois that made him cry (he's totally going to kill me when he reads this, but it was SO sweet!) I went to grab some stuff from the car and when I came back in, Brent was sniffling. I was pretty concerned because the doctors kept telling me sometimes post-heart surgery patients get depressed from the overwhelming experience of having heart surgery and having to rest at home for so long, so I was thinking "Oh no, now he's sad...I'm sad...what're we going to do now!?" I asked him what was wrong and he said it was "a good thing" and he handed me a sweet note from a close friend of his. His friend had gotten him cufflinks for Brent to wear on our wedding day - airplane wings with Brent's dad's initials engraved on them. (Brent's dad was a pilot.) His friend thought he might like the gift a little early and I have to say, even though then we were both crying, it was the sweetest thing ever. It made Brent so happy to know he has such amazing friends who have been so supportive, caring, and thoughtful throughout his many heart surgeries! Brent's dad used to always be right by his side during his surgeries and always made sure Brent recovered well - he's told me a lot of stories about his childhood and his dad being right there with him in the hospital or at doctor's appointments. I'm also sure Brent's sad his dad won't get to see him get married, but we both know he's up in heaven smiling at him and he must be SO proud of Brent and how strong he is! The gifts we got today were just so sweet and made our homecoming that much better!
We also received a card and some date night money from my parents. Since we deserved a "date", I asked Brent what he wanted me to pick up for dinner for his first non-hospital meal and he immediately responded "Thai food!" (I was hoping for sushi, but I didn't just have heart surgery and Thai food is pretty darn good!) I made Brent shower (it had been 9 days - yuck!) and then we enjoyed delicious Thai take-out for dinner and watched a movie. He actually stayed awake for the entire movie! It was so wonderful because for a few hours, I forgot everything we'd been through the past 12 days and I felt like it was a regular date night! Brent really is recovering so well and I am SO grateful how good God has been to us through all of this. While we still don't understand why he needed surgery again so soon and why it happened right before our wedding, we both know there's a reason and have so much to be thankful for now.
So now Brent is peacefully sleeping all propped up in my bed. I know it sounds crazy, but I am super excited to be sleeping on my couch tonight! My couch is actually very comfortable, especially compared to the chair I was sleeping in at the hospital! :) I'll finally be able to get some much needed rest - and I know Brent will sleep a lot better here than he was sleeping in the hospital, which is a huge blessing.
There was also much discussion today about our wedding date/honeymoon and what we should do. We are still so torn and are not sure what to do, but we are leaning towards pushing it back about 4 weeks. It's a very tough decicion and one that's hard to make because Brent seems to be recovering so well and ideally I don't want to put off grad school - but Brent's health is #1 priority right now, so if he will enjoy our wedding day and honeymoon more a bit later, than I don't much care about grad school for now. My degree will be finished eventually! :-) We will decide within a week and I promise we'll let everyone know ASAP what we decide and how to proceed with travel plans, rsvp's, etc. Thank you so much for your patience regarding our wedding day situation - it's not ideal by any means, we would love to be going forth with everything as planned, it just is starting to seem less and less reasonable.
Thank you for your continued thoughts and prayers - if you live in San Diego, feel free to come visit us now! Brent is now staying at my house near downtown San Diego, so call me if you would like to come by!
God bless,
Rachel
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