discharge (again) and weekly medical update (again)

yesterday was a pretty good day, considering i was stuck in a hospital room. AC (not the city) came to visit, so dad got most of the day off (minus chauffeuring) and i spent the better part of the day entertained and distracted by AC (once again, not the city). she brought a mancala board, which i will now force all visitors to play with me. so click the link and read up, because you don't want to embarrass yourself.

today, however, was mostly antigood. i spent most of it sitting in my hospital room just waiting for the folks at the hospital to get their act together and get everything ready for discharge. by 10am, they had made the decision to discharge me, but i didn't actually leave the hospital until after 6pm. so it was kind of a long and frustrating day of very little progress.

which is kind of how the entire last week has been. instead of feeling a little better every day, i have stalled out and really don't feel any better than i did a week ago, and the test numbers and images confirm it. in the past week i've had about 6 chest xrays, a chest ct, and a bronchoscopy with a biopsy. the results of the biopsy still have not come back (the point of the biopsy is to see if there is any rejection, btw), but from all the rest they have determined:
1. the suture rupture in the left anastomosis is a major issue. with only the one bronch, we cannot tell if it has started to heal, so there will be another bronch likely in the next week. if things do not improve, they may have to insert a stent to promote some scar tissue. in the meantime, the prednisone has been lowered (which is good for the blood sugars, but bad for possible rejection) in order to help the healing process;
2. there is definitely pseudomonas present. can't tell for sure if it is new and active or an old colonization, so we are pumping me full of iv antibiotics (which i was sort of hoping to be rid of after transplant) and some nebulized antibiotics (another thing i was hoping id never see again: nebulizers);
3. the pneumothorax has not gotten worse, but it has not improved. if it gets any larger or starts to leak into other parts of the lung, they may have to put a chest tube in (another thing i thought i was rid of) to drain the pleural fluid.

in the meantime, i am home at least, on iv antibiotics and nebulizers and some extra oral meds for at least the next two weeks.

dr h summarized the situation as: a "significant step back/bump in the road", but one he expects me to fully recover from and move on from.

so that is that. i am mostly worn out, though i think it's more psychological than physical.