Maybe Home is Not Where The Heart Is

Twenty minutes at home and we were second guessing if maybe the hospital was the lesser of two evils.


Truly, after last night and this morning, bringing Cole home was the right decision and seeing how happy he is.

Well and the fact that Cole was starting to hit the nurses and scream at them like a rabid caged chimp........

Can chimps get rabies? I don't know, anyways,

and he was throwing anything they offered to him that was theirs that might entertain and calm him down, back at them and across the room.

But this is how getting home went yesterday.

After getting Cole home we were so stressed and crazed becuase Cole had already hurt himself, forgetting about the chest tubes and that he had just had his chest broken into and his heart played with by an amazing heart surgeon.
He was crying "Ouchie Mommy" "Help Mommy" from the pain and you could just see and hear the pain. We felt so helpless.
We were ready to drive back to the hospital and re-admit Cole which they were totally fine with because they understood what we were taking on at home to take care of Cole here. We, did not.
Our friends tried to warn us that if we thought it was hard at the hospital, home was a war zone.
We were trying everything we could think of to make him comfortable and safe from the tubes hanging up or being yanked on by a chubby one year old named Lila.
The first 2 minutes Lila scaled the front of the couch reached up and almost removed one of the tubes from Cole's chest for him.
The next 2 minutes Cole scooted down off the couch and the chest tube with the bulb on the end became like a slack line with a boulder attached to the end and it hung just far enough off the ground to jerk it perfectly to cause the most pain it could.
After that incident we were frantically coming up with any idea to pin them here or tape them there to keep Cole from hurting or giving us a reason to rush him back to the hospital not by choice.
I thought we could put zip footie pjs on and let let the snugness of the zip pjs hold the chest tubes and bulbs to his body and then they wouldn't move and he could move around as he pleased.
Not only did that not work but it hurt and pressed them into him and it caused more tears and with those trying to be zipped up in the pjs he looked like a 90 year old woman without a bra on. His fake boobies under his tight pjs were down by his waist.
So I thought well we will leave them unzipped and pin them to the front. The way they were positioned hurt and caused even more tears and more "Help Mom." He also looked like a terrorist with explosives strapped to him. Here is a picture below of my last ditch effort on trying to make Cole comfortable. We went back to basics and put him back in the hospital gown and letting the tubes lay by his sides and one of us sitting next to him like a bodyguard at all times.



By bedtime last night I think Matt had a little more gray hair at his temples and I was so frazzled I was almost in a corner in the fetal position sucking my thumb, ready to check out.
But we took Cole up to his room for the first time in almost two weeks, for bedtime, and his face lit up. He touched stuff like he had just entered a new toy store. It was new and familiar all at the same time. I of course cried seeing him so at peace finally and happy and forgetting about the pain.
Matt played with him and Cole laughed his hard laugh which made us all laugh and cry some more.
We got Cole settled down and did bedtime tradition. A story, praying (which he will shut his eyes tight for and bare his teeth) but don't ask if he wants to pray because he will tell you no. I think because he thinks if you pray you don't get Puff the Magic Dragon sang to you. He thinks if you get prayer you don't get a song, but he gets both always:)
One of Cole's medications has to be taken at midnight so we set the alarm. Cole was sleeping like a baby for the first time in 10 days and it was really tough to wake him up to give him this nasty medication, but we did it quick with an apple juice chaser and had a diaper change as quick as we could. Cole only woke up a couple of times because his tubes had moved the wrong way and pulled on him to wake him up crying.
After the last adjustment we all slept until 7:30 this morning and it was the first sleep Cole and I had had in a week. We were so happy for Cole getting some rest!