Rick's Journal

So here we are, still in the hospital in NYC.  Monique is doing pretty well physically, sleeping a lot as her body is recovering.  Unfortunately, this recovery should be happening in the comfort of home.  The hospital however will not release her until they know that she will receive the care she needs every three days.  She is going to be on a wound vac machine, a necessity as she has this gaping wound the size of a grapefruit in her abdomen.  With her history of infections, the doctors rightly don't want to close her up.  So for the next 8 weeks or so she'll need a visiting nurse every 3 days.

Due to an insurance snafu, she somehow used up her annual allotment of this service earlier this year while she was doing no such thing.  The insurance company was ticking it down while it wasn't being used.  The fact that it's their fault does not resolve it any quicker.  Monique has finally started calling in favors from people in very high up places and things are starting to happen.  With any luck we'll take her home today.  In the meantime, we sit here and wait. 

I wish laptops on your lap in a hospital room were more condusive to getting work done.

Last night right before dinner Monique was complaining of abdominal pain. Monique is one of those people who handles pain extremely well, so when she complains I give it a lot of credence. She checked her abdomen, which has undergone 10 surgeries in the last 15 years, and there was an area that looked really bad, swollen, red and hot. We looked at that and decided with the way it felt and the outstanding warnings of her condition that we should get her to the ER, so we did.

The nurse took one look at it (it looked a lot worse) and immediately called a doctor over. They poked and prodded and took all the readings and took fluid samples and then did a CT scan. When all is said and done, they *believe* it's *just* a skin infection and prescribed 10 days of antibiotics and a follow up with her PCP.

We got out of there at 12:30 this morning. Thank goodness it was nothing worse. That was quite the scare.