Well, this morning the trauma doctor who had originally seen Mauri on Sunday stopped by to talk to Mauri. I hadn't arrived yet because I was waiting for Mauri's mom to get back home to drop Eric off at her house. Mauri was very happy with the visit, and said that despite it being only about two minutes, the doctor explained everything well, and answered all questions patiently.
The doctor didn't actually take a look at the wound, but said that since it seems to be doing well (I guess based upon the fact that he doesn't have any fever, or based on what the nurse saw last night), that if things continue to heal well without infection, once the 7 days of IV antibiotics are done, that it is likely that Mauri will be able to go home. Once home, they will have him come in for periodic x-rays to check on how the bone is healing. Based on those x-rays, they will decide whether or not he will need to have a bone graft surgery later on.
For Mauri the best part of the visit, apart from learning that he will probably be able to go home relatively soon, is that he can get up out of the bed if he needs to as long as he doesn't put any weight on the affected leg. So, Mauri's family brought some crutches for him to use, along with a walker in case that would be easier for him, because here at the hospital there is only one walker and one set of crutches for the entire trauma ward!!
I guess the real problem is that since people don't get a bill after their hospital stay, the hospital has no way to charge you for missing items. They used to have pillows in the room for the person who comes to visit the patient and stay overnight, but since people started taking them home with them, they no longer provide them. The same thing happened with the breast milk pumps. When I was in the hospital, I asked for one to use because they used to let you use them in the rooms. Since they started to disappear, though, when I was here, there was only one available to use in the entire hospital, where they kept the premature babies. So, when I wanted to use the hospital pump, I had a bit of hike. That was fine when I was feeling up to walking around, but when I was at the height of the infection I could barely move around, so there was no way I was going to make it to the hospital pump room.
There are a lot of things that could be improved. I'm not sure I'm convinced by the whole self-service nature of the hospitals here. If you have family to take care of you, it's fine, but if you don't, I'm not sure what exactly happens. From bathing, where in Mauri's case they bring him a bowl of water, a thin, disposable scrubby sponge with embedded soap powder and a towel and tell him they'll be back in 10 minutes, to, well, pretty much everything else except for putting on new IV medications and changing the sheets for you, you pretty much figure out and do everything yourself. Even if they come in and see a full urinal, they haven't been emptying it. I suppose if you are alone and ask them to, they probably would have to, but it doesn't seem like the norm. We (seriously) even had to look up online to see which of the many bowls and contraptions in the bathroom was a bedpan (it wasn't a normal-looking one), and how you use it. Good thing we have internet enabled cell phones. Things, though, could be worse. I can't imagine having to have been in the old hospital here! Also, we've been pretty lucky with the people who work here. The majority of the doctors and nurses have at least been friendly. There aren't enough of them, so they look overworked at times, but, like I said, they have mostly been friendly.
As for Eric, he looks a lot better. I decided to cancel the doctor's appointment that he was scheduled for this morning. If the pediatricians here didn't know what Eric had, it's less likely that his doctor would know. If the rash comes back, then I probably will bring him in to see her.
This morning, I was showing Eric how to play with one of his toys. You put the ball in a hole in the top part, and the ball falls down into a tray below. He saw me do it, and then tried it himself. He actually did it!! (Mommy is so proud.)
I was looking at the videos that I put up yesterday, and I realized that in the uploaded version of the video in which Eric is playing with his water balloon the end of the video got cut off. I wasn't filming it for much longer anyways, because my instinct made me drop the camera to go to Eric and make sure he was OK, even though he was fine. The original version does show a little bit more of his reaction, though, so after uploading again, here's the other version of the video:
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