Admitted

Monday was an easy day. We needed to run a few errands, so we decided to see a movie while out. I really like the early-day showings; only three other people were in the theater with us. We saw the new Final Destination movie and had prepped by binge-watching all the previous films on Sunday. We don’t remember seeing the original in the theaters, but I’m sure we did. It came out shortly after we started dating, and we always went to the movies. However, we may not have seen it in the theaters. I once had an incident with a movie that kept me from watching scary movies in the theater. I was sitting bent over with my arms on my legs holding a big soda, a scary part came up, I jerked and stabbed myself in the face with my straw. I was scarred emotionally from that incident for years to come! 

We got to the hospital early for our clinic visit this morning. We were a little late for our appointment time, but we were still the first patients in the clinic. That didn’t expedite our seeing Dr. Nair, though, I heard him in a few other rooms before he reached ours. I must have been off my game because I usually go and get coffee when Amanda is back for labs, but didn’t even think about it when she went back. She reminded me of it, too. I was going to go, but she was worried the doctor would come in while I was gone. We both knew better, but in the rules of hospital physics, he would have come by if I had left, and if I stayed, he wouldn’t come. He didn’t come for over an hour either! 

As usual, the PA was the first to see us; we knew this one, but she wasn’t a regular we’d seen in the hospital. She noticed Amanda’s weight was up, 8 pounds, from our last visit 2 weeks ago. Amanda told her it was time for an admission, and about the Vanderbilt visit where the cardiologist wanted her admitted. We talked with her a bit more, then she left. It wasn’t long before she returned with a new hospital bracelet. It was one for the admission; she didn’t waste time, took our word about needing an admission, and got the ball rolling! 

Once Dr. Nair finally arrived and entered the room, he said, “So we’re admitting you!” I guess he didn’t even know about it, or that he needed to approve the admission. He wanted to know about Vanderbilt. Amanda gave the rundown, and I filled in a few gaps. She said that we wanted his opinion on things. He said both centers were great and he trusted them both. We both still felt in a roundabout way that he preferred Vanderbilt, though. He hadn’t talked with Methodist, but he had spoken with the Vanderbilt cardiologist, who wanted to admit and keep Amanda. He was in contact with the Methodist cardiologist regularly. But with Vanderbilt in the mix now, Amanda thought he was leaning towards them and maybe not pushing Methodist as hard. 

I asked about dual listing if we could stay in Texas, and he said we should do that for sure. We talked about how both cardiologists had the same opinion to admit and keep her till transplant. He seemed to feel that it was a good idea. We mentioned the bump in status that both centers talked about. Dr. Nair said he could see how they could easily do that. I asked specifically about which status because he mentioned status 4 was the best she could get while staying at home. As inpatient, it would be status 3, but they could put in an exception to get her bumped to 2 easily with her unique case. This is what the Vanderbilt cardiologist had mentioned. 

We talked a bit about our options, and the more I spoke it out loud, the more I answered my questions. When mentioning how both centers were leaning toward an admission and listing as inpatient, the more I thought of how Vanderbilt was a better option if she was going to just stay in the hospital. Better option in the hospital choice, not the location. If she is admitted to the hospital here, I can easily see her as I work and am in and out for trips. If she goes inpatient in Tennessee, I would need to go back and forth to work some to keep my insurance current and our funds up. 

After visiting Dr. Nair, we headed home to wait for a call that they had a room ready. This is where the perks of living close to the Med Center come into play! Amanda’s back was hurting, and she wanted an adjustment before she was about to lie in a hospital bed nonstop for a few days. So, we ran by the Joint, a chiropractic office we had been to before we left for Tennessee. We had the same Doctor last time and he gave us both crap adjustments, the down side of the Joint is they have rotating doctors. There were two we hadn’t seen before this time, Amanda was adjusted by one, and I by another. We both came out liking our doctors and feeling better. After that, we went to the apartment to regroup and wait for the call. Amanda was getting a few things together, and I made some lunch. Then I promptly took a nap until the phone rang in the afternoon, saying that a room was ready. We loaded up and headed to the hospital.

I needed a nap to turn my brain off for a bit. I had been annoying Amanda with scenarios. I told her that if a Vanderbilt admission was on the table, she needed to think about it. She would have to make that decision because I wouldn’t be able to stay the entire time. As any of you who have followed us for a while know, I am intimately involved in Amanda’s care and hospitalizations. I wasn’t there when she got word of the new heart last time; I was on the drive back from work. There is a possibility that I may not see her before the surgery, and that kills me. If I were on a train when she got the call, it could be tight with me getting off, catching a ride, and a flight to be there in time to see her. The options on the table aren’t easy to pick between, and things are moving rapidly for us now.

We will know tomorrow if Vanderbilt approves Amanda’s case. Maybe tonight, since Dr. Nair said he would call to speak with the cardiologist after their board meeting this afternoon. The timing is bad, of course. I head out tomorrow and will catch a train back to Houston, and I will be wondering all day. Those I wish it didn’t so much revolves around money, and I feel that with the expedited timeline now, I should have been more diligent in the last couple of months to get to work on our home. With it finished and sold we could have the freedom of no mortgage payment and of the money in our bank account to give us a nice buffer. Still, though it is a blessing we can sell our home and have a place to land with the property I inherited. On the other hand, we don’t want to burn through all of the equity in our home during all of this, and have nothing left to remodel the new place, either. It’s funny I worried about selling our home last transplant go round, and things happened so fast it wasn’t even an issue, and the Lord provided just what we needed during that time. Maybe the expedited manner is the Lord saying, “Quick worrying, I’ve got this!” I want to, and know He does, we’ve seen Him do it time and again, yet I’m still here fretting.

I really need to slow my roll. Amanda already hinted at that earlier today when I mentioned she needed to be thinking about staying admitted solo in Tennessee. We won’t know till we get word from Vanderbilt about it all, heck, she still needs to be approved there! I do think Vanderbilt is the better option; it is not the easiest or cheapest, but the best. The way things are lined up with Methodist, all appointments are a month out; it will be 5-6 weeks at best before she’s even listed with them. With a status bump to 2, the wait mentioned was a couple of months, so she theoretically could have a new heart with Vanderbilt before even being listed with Methodist. All of this thinking has been so new since we visited Vanderbilt, and my mind hasn’t stopped spinning about everything. We still need the approval and the details of whether listing in Texas is possible before we make any big decisions, but we have a lot to dredge through soon.

After we were on the floor, they got things rolling relatively quickly with the Bumex and Dopamine drips, which have been the magic ticket to get the fluid off. Nothing can happen until the hospitalist sees you, though. He finally showed up, but it was one we’d never seen. Amanda went over the things with him, but he wasn’t very liberal with the pain meds. If it had been one we’d seen before, there wouldn’t have been any issue. He didn’t want to start on IV pain meds and wanted to keep her on her home regimen. This is fine, but they are fixing to strip 25 plus pounds of fluid off of her rapidly. If that didn’t make her feel bad, the rapid heart rate from the Dopamine doesn’t help along plus the repeated trips to the potty tops the hospital crap sandwich off. She’s already started peeing and has been back and forth every 5-10 minutes right now; it will be a long night for her. He mentioned getting IV pain meds as a backup, but when I asked the nurse last, they weren’t there. I don’t understand why they have to make pain meds such a pain! 

While waiting in the clinic this morning, I saw a Facebook memory from four years ago of our first trip after Amanda’s transplant. It was our first non-hospital trip in years. We’d cashed in our reward points from staying in a hotel for months after the transplant. It would be the first of many post-transplant trips we would make. As I sit in a hospital room while we contemplate moving again, a thousand miles away from home for better medical care, I long for that feeling of freedom from a hospital setting.