Saturday morning one of the doctors came in to see me and we talked about me going home later that day. She said that the CT scan looked good. I was switched to oral antibiotics and they want to monitor me on them for a bit before they feel okay releasing me. Also, apparently my white blood cell count was slightly elevated that morning so they wanted to draw another set of labs that evening and then let me know if i can go home after that. She said that they wanted to monitor me on the antibiotics for 24 hours but she could maybe be persuaded to only do 12. I asked her if they would remove my stitches before I left and she said that they could - usually they wait about 10 days and take them out at a nurses' flow-up visit, but since I have been here 11 days they could do it before I go home.

I was incredibly bored all day on Saturday... First of all there was absolutely nothing on T.V. worth watching so I read a lot and just sat around hoping that my counts would be good later that day. I took some time to start packing my things in hopes that I would be released.

So they came and drew labs at 5 p.m. and then I ordered some dinner and waited. The doctor apparently tried to call my room but I never heard the phone ring, so she called the nurse who brought me the phone. The doctor said that as long as I was feeling well, I could go home!! Yea!! I quickly let DH know and then the nurse started to make preparations for my check-out. She came and removed my staples - which hurt a little bit - and then she said they were preparing the check-out information that they needed to send home with me. Unfortunately we were now at the nurse change-over time so I would have to wait a while until the new nurse could come and go over the info with me and deaccess my port. And they also had to do a last round of vitals - blood pressure, heart rate, temperature and oxygen level.

DH and a couple of the kids showed up to take me home but we ended up waiting probably over an hour before I was finally able to be released. They had to send my prescriptions down to the university hospital because the pharmacy at Huntsman was already closed - and the one at the university was open until 9 p.m. I ended up sending DH down to get the prescriptions because we were waiting so long for the nurses. And he ended up making it back up almost to my room before I was finally ready to go.

It felt nice (and weird) actually putting on real clothes. I have worn a hospital gown for way too long now. DH had to help me with my socks and shoes - it is hard to reach my feet right now. Plus, my left leg and foot is incredibly swollen - we had to loosen my tennis shoe a ton just to get it on.

It was definitely nice getting outside for the first time in 11 days. The ride home was uneventful and as soon as we got there I had to say goodbye to my oldest who was on her way down to BYU for her sophomore year.

Thanks to everyone who helped out my family while I was in the hospital. I know we all greatly appreciated all of the love and kindness that we felt.

Friday morning I kept waiting for a doctor to come in and see me to evaluate how I was doing and answer any questions, and no one showed up - usually someone comes between 6 and 7 in the morning. I woke up pretty hungry and was dying to have something other than liquids - which just do not seem very filling. I finally asked the nurse about it and she paged the doctor and he gave the okay for me to try solid foods. Yea!!

When they finally brought the menu to me I ordered some toast and fruit and some scrambled eggs and sausage. The toast was overcooked, the eggs tasted pretty gross and the sausage was already giving me heartburn after just a couple of bites! Yikes! I think I am going to go crazy here on the hospital food.

I had quite a bit of diahrrea most of the day and felt like I was always having to get up and use the bathroom. There has been little to no drainage again today so that is good news. I have been trying to get up and walking some more but unfortunately need to stay close to the bathroom!

A doctor finally came in and saw me later in the afternoon and I am crossing my fingers that they will let me go home tomorrow. He said that the infectious disease team was going to come talk to me because I guess the ball is somewhat in their court as to whether or not I can be released. Apparently I have two different infections - one in the blood stream and a separate one in my urine. The urinary one is a common one so they are not concerned about that, but they are concerned with how I got the bacteria that is in my blood.

Just as the doctor was about to leave my room the infectious disease team came in and they asked me all sorts of questions and then looked at my abdomen and felt around it to see if I had pain anywhere - which is a silly question to ask someone who has just had major abdominal surgery... I guess afterwards they decided to order a CT scan on me to make sure that there was nothing abnormal that they could see from the scan. I was worried at first that they were going to make me drink the oral contrast - which gives me diahrrea - but they didn't. It was pretty quick - they just wheeled me down to the imaging floor and we were done in less than 10 minutes.

Friday night I did not sleep well at all for some reason. I slept in the same position as the night before but just laid there for hours at a time never really drifting off to sleep.  Plus, I kept having to use the bathroom too.