Home Sweet Home

I really need to update this thing a bit more often before I fall further behind than I can possibly catch up with!

I believe I left off somewhere in a recovery stupor enjoying my first food on Tuesday evening. I really have to say that I had the 3 most enjoyable danish women with which to share a hospital room. These ladies were a riot - and while I could understand most of their danish, they were very sweet to switch to english whenever they were addressing me directly. We exchanged names and talked about our dogs and just really had some fun in the room. Perhaps I will see Tøve, Marianne or Bertha again at some point in this journey - great ladies!

So Wednesday morning we woke up and Drew Carey returned to take each of our breakfast orders and deliver our breakfast. Nothing special - the typical danish breakfast of bread and cheese, etc., but everything was fresh and nothing felt like pre-packaged hospital cafeteria food, so that was definitely a plus! One of the other nurses then put a thermometer on each of our tables and I really didn't think much of it until she closed the curtains around two of my roommates, at which point Marianne then hollered out "we don't take our temperature the same way you do in the states!". Ugh. Enough said about that.

The doctor then came to speak with each of us and when that was said and done, we were escorted over to the patient hotel. And I would like to reassure my dad at this time that yes, we did in fact take the monorail from the hospital over to the patient hotel!

We were all checked into the hotel and were given meal tickets. We had to give our breakfast, lunch or dinner ticket each time we went to the hotel restaurant for our meals. The staff would then check for all the tickets before closing up the restaurant and if a patient missed a meal, the nurses would then go to the patient's room to check on them and make sure all was okay.

Each evening, a nurse came to my room around 9:30 pm or so to check the surgical drain and make sure things were okay with that. It was optional but an option I wanted! And each morning, Ole joined me at the hotel so that we could go over to the hospital to see the nurse for a quick check-up.

The hotel itself was like any other basic hotel. The only difference was that the bathroom had all kinds of safety railings and equipment that you would expect in a hospital setting. However, I really need to talk to these people about their paper products - the sandpaper labeled as paper towels and toilet paper just wasn't very nice!

My room had a fully adjustable bed, a nice chair, a TV, and a desk with internet connection. I had the most fabulous view out over the lake while laying in bed...



Outside the hotel there were several benches and I found some new pets while I was there:



Rather than bore you with the details of each day at the hotel (they all kind of blended together after awhile!), I will just tell you that I came home on Sunday and I am very happy to be back home!! And, I'll share a few more pictures from the patient hotel...