Mets Day 32 - Feeling ready to come home

The past couple of days have been relatively quiet.  On Sunday, we went to church at an LDS chapel located about a block from the Obama's Chicago home.  After, we came back to the Friary and Jennifer took a walk down to the lake shore in the sun while I took a long nap.  Apparently doing two museums in a row had drained my batteries.  It felt good to recharge. 

Today the home health care nurse visited and said everything looked normal.  The main issue we have been facing is dealing with continued leakage of urine from where the SPT tube emerges from my abdomen. We have found that the best way of controlling it is to pack around the tube exit point with gauze and a "poinse" pad -- a women's bladder protection pad -- sideways across where the tube comes out.  Everything is held in place with a Depends disposable adult diaper.  Unlike how the nurses in the hospital did it, we don't use tape to hold the gauze in place around the SPT.  During the six days I was in the hospital, the nurses used so much tape, and changed it so often, that it began to pull my away my skin, raising painful blisters and raw spots that would then get soaked in urine and infected.  Now that we have stopped using tape, we have been gently washing the raw skin and coating it with antibiotic ointment, and it has quickly healed.  It feels much better now. 

Today we drove over the Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio in Oak Park, and took a tour.  His home was a workshop of sorts, and he was always tinkering and changing things around.  It was an interesting look into the mind of a remarkable architect and designer.

Hopefully, during tomorrow's appointment, the doctor will remove the foley catheter, leaving me with just a single tube.  As I understand it, the SPT will stay in place for several more weeks.  Starting tomorrow, and continuing after I return to DC, I'll be doing "peesical" therapy -- teaching me how to void my neobladder through muscle control and manually pushing down on the neobladder.  The SPT tube will stay there until I've got that process mastered.  (I'll also continue to use the SPT to flush out the neobladder several times a day to remove any lingering mucus.)  Depending on how I progress with the physical therapy, eventually the SPT will be be clamped off while I practice, available to be used in case my urethra gets blocked with mucus or I can't otherwise drain my neobladder.  Only after the therapist and the doctors are satisfied that I can consistently empty by neobladder via the urethra, and the level of mucus has sufficiently decreased that there is little risk of plugging, will they take out the SPT. 

We also hope to get the results of the pathology tomorrow.  I emailed today to see if it was ready, but did not get a reply.  I'll post a summary of that as soon as I receive it.

We're also very hopeful that during tomorrow's appointment, we'll be cleared to return home to DC.  I'm ready to return home.