Discharge Day!

Friday, May 25th, was the day we thought we would be discharged. We got everything we needed done the day before, so if everything looked good on Friday morning they said we could go. That night I took care of Aili all by myself, the nurse only came in to do her vitals and that was it. She told us there was no reason we needed to be there anymore, and to be the squeaky wheel so we could go home! So during rounds that morning they said everything looked great and they would get the paperwork and everything we needed together so that we could leave! Yahoo! Good thing too because we had a male nurse that day who had no idea what he was doing. I seriously felt like I could have done his job better than him that day. I kind of didn't want him to touch Aili, because he was such a mess. He just made me nervous every time he walked into the room.

As soon as we knew we were being discharged Chris left to get some stuff done so we could fly home the following day. He bought plane tickets, returned the breast pump, shipped the oxygen concentrator home, and bought a cooler to ship all my breast milk home. Don't EVER even suggest throwing away breast milk at a hospital, it is complete blasphemy. I had so much, and we live in Utah, so I was like, I don't know how I'm going to get it home....oh they will find a way. I didn't want to pay a ton of money to ship it home though. They were not going to let me throw it away, and it was too late to donate it, because the doctor has to take your blood and do all this stuff before you can do that. So we bought a cooler, and planned on getting dry ice Saturday morning then picking up the milk at the hospital and checking it as luggage on the plane.

It took a while to get everything in order for us to leave. We were mostly waiting for the nebulizer Aili needed for one of her medications. Its a little machine that turns this liquid medication into a mist to then be inhaled. So Aili and I sat around just waiting most of the day. Then Chris came back and we waited some more. Then we finally had everything we needed. Got a discharge papers and left!

Every other hospital we have been to, which is 3, a nurse has to walk you out when you are discharged. I don't know if it was the scatter brained male nurse that I seriously could not stand, but we just walked out of the unit by ourselves....it was kind of weird. We just took our baby and left. We stopped at the pharmacy in the hospital to get our medication then we were on our way back to the hotel. I think it was around 4:00pm at this time. We were all exhausted but SO excited that we were out of the hospital! We couldn't believe it! We actually did it! We got through the surgery and Aili was discharged 9 days later! When the lady who talked to us about the surgery said that some patients are discharged 7-10 days after surgery we thought, "Wow that would be awesome!", but we didn't want to get our hopes up for that. But Aili did it! She was a 7-10 dayer! Even after having her chest opened for 3 days! She seriously rocked that surgery!

Once we got back to the hotel we just crashed.

Chris went and got us some Lobster Rolls from a little place one of the doctors recommended. It was delicious! We gave little Aili a much needed bath, then we went to sleep. It was a little bit of a rough night. I think Aili was in a bit of pain.

That morning we packed everything up end headed over to David and Liberty's house to give them back all the stuff they so kindly lent us and to said our goodbyes. Then we headed off to the airport. We left with quite a bit of time to get to the airport....good thing! The bridge that we had taken over the bay going to Palo Alto and had planned to go over going back to the airport was CLOSED! The entire bridge closed! Good thing we had a GPS that we could look at to make our way over to another bridge. Then we had to stop in a parking lot to feed Aili which was a disaster. She was so hungry but in pain so she would start eating then just start crying uncontrollably. It was awful. And while I tried to feed her Chris watched a guy unsuccessfully try to steal a truck out of the parking lot. Fun stuff!

After that we returned our rental car, got our ridiculous amount of luggage onto the shuttle bus and headed to the airport. We flew Southwest home so we got 2 free checked bags each. Which was awesome so we didn't have to lug around so much crap. Except for our biggest suitcase was 7 pounds over so we ended up having to pay for it anyway. Oh well...have to get home.

The flight home was okay. The plane wasn't very full so they let us have a whole row to ourselves with the car seat in the seat next to the window. That was really nice. Aili did okay on the flight. She was a bit uncomfortable but I got her to sleep most of the time. She was fussy but never really cried loud, so I don't think she was too much of a bother to those around her. A lady at the end of the flight commented that she did pretty well, so it wasn't too bad!

We were so excited to be home. My parents came to pick us up in our car from the airport. They were so excited to see her. She just had the most miraculous recovery! Oh and we totally wore our matching Stanford shirts home we looked awesome! So happy to be home!