Oops! There's a problem with inconsistant blogging ... you forget to add clarifying details.
Just a week or so after my post-rehab hospitalization, the doctors finally got around to wanting to remove the port in my chest wall to prevent infection. Went into a doctor's office and, after squirming around [on their part] about not wanting to remove it in the office, they finally did it. The doctor took some of that last blood for testing. Several days later, I get a call from the doctor that they want me to get some stuff together and they would send an ambulance to take me to the hospital!! Too late with the removal, there was infection. And another need to start a PICC line!! This stay would last only about 10 days, but they taught me a couple of things. 1) Pick up the mess you make before the ambulance arrives. They don't want to help! 2) Make sure you have an emergency go-to-hospital kit before you need it. This is especially true if you are on an unusual med or method of delivery. Especially true if you are on an insulin pump and Humulin R U500 insulin. There is nothing as scary to a doctor than a treatment or med they are not familiar with. Trust me, their first reaction is to put you on MDI and a sliding scale of insulin that may have never entered your body. 3) Make sure you have ALL the pieces in one location and in a spot where your loved ones or friends know where to locate it.
A few short months after the infection hospitalization, I ended up in St. Luke's again. (Sometime in Novemer 2012.) Just another hospital visit I can hardly recall; probably for the healing advantage to my remaining foot. And, you know, as of May, 2013, I'm still not healed!
A question or two about my chair. Well, it is up and running but there are a few quirks with the way the chair is set and the arms stick out a bit too far. Of course, I'm just a know-nothing woman who sits in this chair almost 18 hours/day. I took delivery and saw the way they worked on it to even get in the front doors of my building. They did make the "Bomb" skinnier so that it did fit. I could even get it through doors without so much of a soft scraping of the foam arm pads. After every repair/adjustment, they always had to be called back for something they set awry! Tilt of the chair to prevent me from sliding out; too much of a backward "slouch" to the back for me and, thus, the arms crept out! In this time period, the cover and foam on the arms got mutilated and, now, I know that the arm position was responsible. The serviceman said that they couldn't go inward anymore but I knew that was not so. Just a few weeks ago [in late April] I took the tools in my own hands and worked the giant screw loose and shoved like heck as far as the metal connection would let me go and then tightened it all back up. Done on both sides despite the serviceman's insistence that it couldn't be done! I'm just waiting now [almost Memorial Day] for the new length, height and tilt to the arms that, of course, couldn't be done without a physical therapist's recommendation because I don't know what's good for me all by myself!! OOOOOOOOH!
One bit of advice: if you're in the chair, you know how it feels and how it isn't working properly. Stick to your guns!!