A new chatter around the hospital

Sara's doctors and nurses know that she really wants to go home and with Vallejo falling through you've read some of the options and ideas that have come rolling through in the last week. Well, there continues to be no room in the Santa Rosa ICU, as it is a very small unit. I also understand that there is a concern about her being a "chronic" bed, but that's ok. We know this already.

So, two days ago I get a call from the new discharge planner on the case and she asked if I wanted to go ahead and have her discharged from Walnut Creek to home. Um, hell yes! She said that her doctors have decided that would be ok after getting some more information about the Medi-CAL program. (it is called the EPSDT waiver program. allows us to have private duty nursing in the house 24hrs so that Sara can be with her family. She's still considered a pediatric (child) under Medi-CAL (under 21)).

Discharge planner said she'd call me on Friday and we'd talk more. Well, she did and we were going over an actual equipment list. What we're going to need at home to take care of her. Hospital bed, patient lift, oxygen, suction machine, feeding pump, traech supplies, etc. They are going to get the stuff ordered and start delivering so we can prepare her room and care areas. My head spins to think of it.

Then Social Worker called. She's worked the Medi-CAL program before. She offered to help marshall the Kaiser people and Medi-CAL people into writing the correct orders, paperwork, arrangements, etc. I gratefully accepted her help and she's happy to help Sara go home.

When I got to the hospital last night that was the chatter between the nurses and RTs on the floor - Sara preparing to go home. They had questions for me -all of them want to make sure she's going to be ok when turned over to my care. They asked about the Medi-CAL program, our plans for rehab at home, how will we handle emergencies, etc. It was nice to be talking about it finally as a nearing event. Sara couldn't stop smiling and rolling her head side to side as she looked at the face of whoever was talking.

Nobody can be more excited than her for this...