There’s no place like home

We were kind of thinking that Daryl might get out today, but not 100% positive. So I went to work,  and said that I’d be checking on him throughout the day to see what was up. Well I did get a call and they said that Daryl could come home this afternoon. I wanted to double check with him to make sure that he was on the same page, and soon I was off asking my boss if I could leave early. I went home first to change clothes and then to the local gas station to fill up the car. Even though our car has quite a few miles on it, it still has been getting in the low 20’s for gas mileage. And just as I was leaving the gas station, I saw all these men standing by our war memorial in their service dress. I wasn’t sure what was going on, and then I figured out that they were having some type of dedication or speaker. Not sure which. But it looked pretty cool with these service men all standing at attention in the middle of the memorial, I did a U turn on the highway and snapped a quick picture.

Memorial in Lawler

I stopped in the next town to do some errands, which seems to be an every day occurrence anymore, and then headed north to get Daryl. Now I usually don’t have the radio station on, but I only had one diet coke so far today and by this time and was thinking that the radio would keep me watching for deer along the road. So I’m driving and then on the radio I hear them reciting the Gettysburg Address. I’m thinking it must be a sign. I just saw all these guys in their Auxiliary uniforms and now this? Wow, kinda cool. When about an hour later I hear the same speech again and now I’m thinking what in the heck is going on? Here it turns out that today is the 150th anniversary of the speech. So now I’m thinking that maybe the servicemen and the anniversary isn’t such a coincidence and they had something to do with each other. But as I’m driving and listening to the speech (for the second time), I realized what a ‘score’ is. If you remember the speech, it goes … “Four score and seven years ago”.  Since a score is anything that is measured by 20, that would be 87 years. Now maybe you knew that, but I had time to listen to the speech today, twice, and just figured that out.  As I’m driving, I’m also remembering the only thing that Daryl asked me to bring. It was a button down shirt. He wanted this shirt so he didn’t have to pull a shirt over his head. Yup. you guessed it. I forgot it. Now I’m on the look out for any place that I thought would sell men’s shirts. I finally spotted one and I was in and out of the store within minutes. So I finally get to the hospital, park the car, and go find Daryl. By about this time, I’m getting pretty good finding my way to his room. His room was on the fifth floor but with 6th floor room numbers. Yea. He was waiting for me and his shirt (whew!). A trip to the pharmacy and soon we were on the way home. Now there is one glitch to this whole story, and it deals with the prescription drugs. We were asked quite a few times this past couple of days about what medications he uses. When he said none, they just couldn’t believe it. He did tell them that he took aspirin about two months ago for a headache and before that it was July of 2012 when we were on Ragbrai he took some Advil. They just were amazed,  and said that he wasn’t the normal patient that they see. But we didn’t think too much of this conversation until we got home. We unpacked his prescription bag that we got from the pharmacy and just stood at the kitchen table staring at all the bottles. He was prescribed nine medications. Yea.. nine. To make it even worse, they gave him medicine that was called one thing on his medication spreadsheet and another name on the bottles. Oh my. We had the worst time in the world trying to figure all this out, and to top it off, they forgot one. How confusing. So I don’t know if we were asked so many times about what medications he took to get us ready for this or not. But after a call back to the hospital to get it straight, we eventually got it all checked out. Anyway, I sure hope so. After the night doses of his meds, he was finally able to get some sleep. He really hasn’t had much sleep since last Thursday, so this was a good thing.  I think the old saying is true, ‘There’s no place like home’

Daryl in the chair, Reno on the rug, and Little Kitty by the fire. Looks like a good night for everyone!