Rehab Attempt 1

 My recovery was much slower than the Transplant manual I received when I qualified for transplant indicated it would be.  When they first mentioned my going to a nursing home or rehab facility to complete my recovery, I freaked out a little bit.  There had been no mention of that in the manual.  I finally accepted that I would need more help recovering than my family could give me, so I needed to go.

I had several setbacks that prolonged my move to the rehab facility for weeks.  However, I finally made it!  I was excited to be on the road to recovery and willing to work hard.  But then, things began to go awry once more.  I had the second negative experience with a nurse, and I began to get ill again.

I don't know why the bed alarm kept going off.  It was meant to alarm the nurses if I attempted to get out of bed alone, but every time I rolled over it went off.  I understand the nurse's frustration, because she was busy and had to keep checking on me.  But one day I was talking to my Mom on the phone and left it on when the nurse came in.  Not knowing Mom could hear her, she began to say unkind things to me, asking if I was going to have a pity party for myself today.  I don't know why she would say that, because I was excited to be working toward recovery.  She threatened to do something to make sure I didn't get out of bed on my own.  I got very upset and insisted to Mom I was leaving and would be outside waiting for her to pick me up.  When Mom told me I needed to stay, I tried to get ahold of my husband, but he was working.  Finally, Mom contacted the transplant coorinator and she came and settled me down and investigated the nurses behavior.  My Mom told her what she overheard.

What I didn't realize, was that I was slipping into delirium again.  That night I hallucinated that I had driven home, visited my husband and son, went to church and came back before the nurses knew I was gone.  As I lay there, I realized the hallucinated car I drove was in the parking lot, and I had left the lights on.  To this day I cannot figure out how I got out of the bed on my own to go turn the lights off.  I had my walker and entered the hall, where I saw a nurse coming.  I tried to hurry back to the bed to avoid being caught and fell.  I hit my head on the door and my tailbone on the floor.  I laid there and began to cry in both pain and frustration.

I still didn't know I had slipped into delerium.  I remember overhearing a doctor chewing my nurse out.  He told her she needed to have some compassion, I wasn't in my right mind and not thinking clearly.  I thought how kind he was for defending me, but wondered why in the world he would say I wasn't my right mind.  I don't remember the ambulance ride to the hospital.  It was days later that I became aware of my surroundings again.  They told me I was in the ICU for sepsis.  I had gone through surgery to remove a large blood clot around my liver, my medicine port had been removed, and it looked like the sepsis was beginning to resolve.  

I recently was reviewing some paperwork and saw that I had an MRI on my brain, CT scans, and an ultra sound on my neck because they found a growth on my thyroid and discovered I have Hashimoto's (Graves) disease.  I remember none of it. But once again, I survived and was back on the road to recovery.