Diary #277

Another thing I’ve learned about the medical bureaucracy:  discharges sometimes happen unexpectedly and with lightning speed.  One can go to bed after being told, “discharge will be in the next few days”, and wake up eight hours later to “it’s happening right now!  Why aren’t you here yet?”  It happened to a friend of mine when she had a baby; it happened to another friend after major surgery.  And yesterday, it happened to Jae.  After over two months of constant hospitalization in four different facilities altogether, the doctors suddenly decided that it was time for her to go home.  And then it was wham, bam, here are your discharge papers and sayonara.  Needless to say, we weren’t ready; we still thought we had several days in which to make preparations, but nope!  That all went out the window.  I started moving about 8:30 yesterday morning, and only stopped about 12 hours later; I didn’t even realize I hadn’t eaten dinner until sometime after 9 PM.  And now tomorrow is her first outpatient doctor appointment, and I still haven’t filled out the rehab application that I originally planned to do first thing yesterday morning.  But at least she’s home, and I reckon that by the end of the week we’ll be more or less where we should’ve been today.  Ah, well, what’s life without stress?