(Cr)happy 4th of July

I wish I could say that our 4th of July was great, but honestly, it was a pretty crappy day.

Jeff is battling yet another UTI (urinary tract infection). It's his third one in a row, and he's pretty tired of feeling like crap. It was a beautiful morning, and while Evie was playing in the pool with my parents, Jeff and I were stuck in his room attending to stuff like cutting his hair, trimming his beard, doing breathing treatments, and administering medications.  Neither one of us wanted to be there. We wanted to be out in the backyard swimming with our daughter - not relying on my parents to do that for us.

In the afternoon, I took Evie to a local park to celebrate the 4th with lots of festivities. Jeff still wasn't feeling good, so my mom stayed home with him. Evie had fun playing in the bounce house and eating a sno cone. I had fun watching her have fun, but what I really wanted was for Jeff to be there with us.

Not Jeff in his chair ... I wanted the old Jeff there.

I wanted to have the kind of fun we had last year when we went to the HB parade and spent the whole day hanging out with friends and watching fireworks. It was one of the last normal family things we did before the accident.

I watched as the families at the park interacted with one another. Kids running around screaming. Parents standing around talking to one another. Folks rushing here and there. There were hundreds of people at the park today. And not one of them was in a wheelchair.

I looked at them with jealousy. Just last year, I was one of those people. I know you can't judge people by just looking at them. Everyone is going through something. But in just viewing them from the outside, I felt like I was glimpsing back at myself and my family and how we used to be a short year ago.

Evie and I got back home, and Jeff could tell something was off with me. At the end of the day, he looked at me and said, "I'm sorry." He was apologizing simply because he knew I was having a bad day. That's what is so great about our relationship. When I'm having one of these days, Jeff knows that I'm not upset with him. Instead, he knows I'm angry at this injury. I'm angry at how unfair life can be.  And today, I was just having an "I miss our old life" kind of day.

Thankfully, our night ended with watching fireworks both on TV and outside our back window. Evie was happy. Her reactions to the fireworks were a precious reminder that for her, this 4th of July was fun and magical. No comparisons to the past. She just looks forward.

Tomorrow is a new day, and our weekend has just begun. I'm excited to see what it will bring.

An Outpatient Adventure

Today Jeff had an outpatient appointment to place a suprapubic catheter. We've been wanting him to get one for a while (oh the things you get excited about when you have a spinal cord injury!), and today was the day.

The procedure lasted 30 minutes total. Packing up, driving there, surgery prep, recovery, driving home, and getting Jeff settled back into bed took an additional 6 hours. Good thing I took the day off work today.

My mom went with us which was a huge help because we had to take a lot of stuff with us. When I called to make the appointment, the nurse I spoke with went down the list of standard stuff with me:

Nurse: "Make sure he has someone to drive him home."
Me: "No problem."
Nurse: "Make sure he wears loose clothing."
Me: "Of course."
Nurse: "Be sure to arrive 30 minutes early."
Me: "Ok. But I want to be sure that you know my husband is a quadriplegic and is on a ventilator."
Nurse: "Oh..."

After several minutes of checking with other nurses, it was decided that we should probably arrive at least an hour to 90 minutes early, bring our back-up ventilator to be used once he's on the gurney, and our Hoyer lift to transfer him from the chair to the gurney.

Here's what the van looked like when we got packed:

Yes, Jeff is in there too!

I wish I would have gotten a picture of my mom and me trying to fit the vent and lift into the van. Talk about a comedy of errors! At least we discovered this trip that the lift comes apart for easy, convenient ... transportation, which is good to know for future road trips.

Jeff's procedure was done at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach. I have lived my whole life in Southern CA, and I've never been to Hoag - neither had Jeff. When we entered, I thought we were checking in to a 5-star hotel. The ladies at the registration desk wore suit jackets, not scrubs! The decor was superb, and the people were overly nice.

After checking in and getting Jeff into the pre-op room, I noticed that the gurney had a base on it that wouldn't allow the lift to fit under it; therefore, we wouldn't be able to transfer him using the lift (after all that breaking down, cursing, and sweating my mom and I had done!) Luckily there were some strong guys in the radiology department who were able to get Jeff from his chair onto the gurney. Whew!

Everything went smoothly. The procedure itself was probably the quickest part of our day.

Here's Jeff afterward. Happy from the "relaxation medication" they gave him.

He's so cute!

Once he was cleared to go home, we did everything in reverse ... got Jeff dressed, switched vents, more heavy lifting courtesy of the radiology staff, back into the chair, and out the door.

We took a moment to pause outside the hospital. Jeff enjoyed getting warm in the sun.

All in all, it was a good trip. It was the first time we got to drive our OWN van to a doctor appointment, which was a great feeling. And we even stopped by Del Taco on the way home. Yum.

Now Jeff is back in his own bed, resting, trying to warm up from being in a cold hospital. Tired, but happy to be home.

It was certainly a lot of work getting there and back, but such is the life of a quadriplegic and his family. Nothing happens fast any more. But at the end of the day, we had a successful outing and a sense of accomplishment.

Is it time to go to bed yet? :)

Cheers!