When I got to the hospital Wednesday morning (Dec 31) Dr Devine had been in and said Doug could go home.  No followup appointment needed and he said it was ok to travel and we didn't need to stay around for a few days.  Doug was still very weak and decided to go ahead and order breakfast.  We went for a walk, he ate and then had to rest.  Then he took a shower which is exhausting and put on clothes for the first time in 5 days!  He had to nap again after that.   It didn't take me long to pack, just ostomey supplies and his Mayo "coughing" pillow and we called for the nurse at noon.  She went over discharge orders and we were out of there!  Well, sort of, we had to pick up prescriptions from the pharmacy first.  Cipro (antibiotic) for 2 more days, Flagyl (c-diff precaution) for 2 more days and another prescription for Oxycodone.   We ate at the cafeteria and by then he was more than ready to lay down and rest.

I can't tell you how convenient the subway level at Mayo is.  It was so nice to just go down one level and wheel him to the hotel elevator and right up to our floor.  It is a little trek there, you are going across the street and you wind around a bit but oh my it was so nice not to have to take him outside in the 2 degree temperature!    When I extended my reservation on Sunday night, the sweet hotel clerk also extended the less expensive weekend rate.  How is that for favor?  Thank you God!  :)

I put him to bed and commenced to packing the room.   We had noticed at the cafeteria the little cereal bowls and he mentioned getting one so we could just head home on Thursday and not have to stop for breakfast.  By the time we finished eating he was so uncomfortable that I forgot to pick up the cereal and milk.   I noticed on the map there is a little grocery/pharmacy downtown so I let him sleep while I took a walk.  Since it was New Year's Eve a lot of the stores were closing early but I found the store and it ended up being a cute little pharmacy/drug/gift store.  They had cereal but only skim milk and in Doug's opinion that's like drinking "water that is tinted white!"  However their Christmas merchandise was 75% off, and who can pass that  up?  Not me!  Really, I didn't get much but my inner "bargain finder" fix was met.  :)  And I did get to walk and check out a (very) little of downtown Rochester.  In warmer weather and different circumstances, it would be a cool place to check out.    I was "a little" frozen when I got back to the room to check on Doug.  He was good and since we were out of water also (there was a little refrigerator and microwave in our room) I went back over to the hospital cafeteria and loaded up on water, oj, cranberry juice and MILK.   

Some friends from Iowa had blessed us with a gift card to an Italian restaurant on our 2nd trip.  We still had $ on it so I ordered to go supper from there.  Our family tradition is Lasagna and sparkling grape juice (in wine glasses) at home on New Year's eve.  So Doug and I got Lasagna to share and the yummiest crab cakes.  Oh my it was good!   It was such a big serving we couldn't even finish it all!  If you get to Rochester, make it a point to go to Victoria's.

I pretty much had everything ready to go and by 9:30 we were ready for bed.  Forget the stupid ball!
The meds Doug has been on for c-diff have a side effect of sleeplessness so he was still up in the night quite often.   When I woke Thursday morning it was 8:42!  I guess we were tired!  I sooo wanted to be up and out of there earlier but, oh well.  I got the car packed and we were checked out by 10:30. 

The drive home was long and uneventful.  COLD and windy in Minnesota, Cold in Iowa and then just south of K.C.  it was sprinkling and the temp was 30-32.  They were salting the bridges.  We finally drove out of that about Neosho, MO.  No offense to the truckers but, driving on Christmas and New Year's day was actually kind of nice as there weren't many semi's out there.  (Love you Brad:)
We got home at 8:45pm on Thursday.  I just hugged and hugged and hugged my Eric.  And he let me and hugged me back!

I am so blessed by 2 angel friends that came over and cleaned for me.  Oh it is sooo nice to be able to put my house back together and not have to worry about that.  Thank you thank you thank you friends.

Friday I did laundry and unpacked and found my kitchen counters again and Eric and I made a trip to Wal-mart.   It is soooo nice to be home and all together again.  Eric's youth group was going to a movie on Friday but he wanted to stay home with us.   We sure missed each other!

This is getting long but I have one more thing to share so I am going to do it in a new post. 

I can't express enough how blessed we are.  Thank you so much for your prayers and support in more ways than you can imagine.  How many ways can I say Thank You? 

Doug, Jan and Eric