Please...just set our expectations!

It's Sunday night at 10:13pm and I've just returned from visiting Joe for the 3rd and final time today. He was very much looking forward to entering today's blog and even has the mental frame of mind and voice to do so. Unfortunately, he still finds himself in the ICU which keeps him from having access to his laptop, cellphone and even his iPod. This is not because he isn't continuing to do great...quite the contrary, actually. It is merely because of a series of mistakes and misunderstandings that occurred after being led to believe he would be moved upstairs to the regular ward by early afternoon today.

I don't want to dwell or even give the impression that we aren't completely impressed with the clinic -- because we are. But we were told yesterday immediately following the surgery that he was doing so well he was considered a "fast tracker" -- someone who would be out of ICU sooner than the average patient. Of course, we all got excited and Joe was able to start looking forward to seeing Max.

At that point, Joe was assigned to a specific room "upstairs" that had a patient scheduled to be discharged today. Well, as it turns out, he wasn't released and instead of Joe being assigned to another room he is forced to wait until this gentleman is well enough to go home before he can leave ICU. This means that even though Joe is medically approved to get the catheter removed from his neck, the IV removed from his left arm and oh-so-ready to fall asleep in a place that does not echo with the sounds of heart monitoring machines beeping, the incessant alarms of blood pressure monitors sounding and his next door neighbor yelling at the top of her lungs during a sponge bath, that he must stay put until this guy is sent home.

Come 5:00pm, it was clear that Plan A was not underway and boy was Joe livid. It takes a lot to get him upset but this series of events meant that it would be another 18 hours before he could see his baby boy again -- and this was just not acceptable. And to think that, even though we would have all been disappointed, all of this could have been tolerable if they would have been able to set our expectations a bit better.

Needless to say, his Mom and I spoke privately with the head nurse who agreed to at least take out the IV and promised to reschedule the 3am X-ray for a more reasonable hour so he could get an uninterrupted night's sleep. At this point, we'll take what we can get. Luckily, Max was smart enough to make his Daddy a frame full of photos of his favorite pics of the two of them so Joe can gaze at these images as he presses the button on his hand-held morphine dispenser and slides into a drug-induced sleep.

But I digress.

The important thing here is that Joe is doing great. He sat in a chair today for a while (see the photo I sneakily took while the nurses weren't looking), was able to stomach some ice chips and cranberry juice and the biggest hurdle of all -- had a 3/4" thick tube removed from his chest that was 6" deep and causing him a great deal of discomfort. Around here, these are incredible milestones that we celebrated throughout the day.

So, we head into day #3 of our post-op journey and Joe promises to be back with you tomorrow to explain in his own words how his recovery is going. I fear my writing pales in comparison to his -- but I hope it gives you some insight to our day.

Thanks to all of you who have been trying to reach him at the hospital. He doesn't have a phone in ICU so try again Sunday and by then he will be upstairs and more than ready to take calls. But if he's asleep then you'll have to talk to me. Just setting your expectations.

~ Allison