I know - what happened to Barb and Dave?    It has been a really harrowing few weeks.   Dave’s surgery happened at what is possibly the worst time ever imagined.  He had a QUADRUPLE bypass on Monday, March 16th.  Started at 7:30 am in the morning, he was out by 12:30 pm - and then the fun started.  Because of the years on blood thinners after the stents, he had some trouble clotting.  Given his history, they surgical team wasn’t surprised and they had platelets at the standby to give to him.   And it worked.  He was stabilized and by the next morning, he opened his eyes for me.    

Then it went downhill - his kidneys didn’t like that and proceeded to just say go away.  As fluid built up it was decided to do temporary dialysis to see if giving them a rest would help.  So for three day (Wednesday-Friday) of last week they took off 2 liters of fluid each day.  Saturday, during the day, Dave was pretty down, as no urine was being made and Dave was resigned to having to go on dialysis.  This was a known complication and so we weren’t shocked by it.  But Saturday night the kidneys decided that ok, they felt much better, and would work again.   Yes, it is strange to say I become excited because my husband was peeing!  But it really was great!!!!    

Of course there was another little wrinkle in the whole process - remember, we never, ever, do things in a normal, easy fashion.     Wednesday, the 18th, the decision was made to close all of the hospitals in the Phoenix area, at least, to everyone except patients.  Women giving birth could have one person with them and so could minor children.  Otherwise, only if a patient was dying was a family member allowed in.   So I had to keep abreast of what was going on via phone chats with the nurses.  Luckily, several of the nurses in the Cardiac ICU had iPhones, so every day I got to FaceTime with Dave.  The nurses at Banner Desert Medical Center were absolutely fantastic.    

Once his kidneys started making urine Dave’s focused shifted to how soon he could get released.  On Tuesday, March 24th, he was moved out of ICU into a regular Cardiac Care room.  Most importantly, his bladder catheter was removed, as well as the temporary dialysis lines.  And removing the catheter was the best procedure of all as far as Dave was concerned!   I was able to get him some underware and his phone (they had nurses at the drop off point at the front of the hospital collecting things for patients) and he started doing several walks that day. 

So yesterday morning (March 25th) all of his different physicians came by and signed off on his going home, and I was able to pick him up on 5:45 pm and BRING HIM HOME!

So now we will work on getting his strength back and see how things look at the end of May regarding travel for the summer.   I just might be that we will need to spend the summer here - so glad we decided to get this little place as a ‘just in case the world starts to collapse’ place to hunker down.

We hope that everyone is safe and taking care of themselves and their loved ones.  I promise, I will update more often this spring as Dave recovers and we figure out things to do that involve only the two of us.