Sunday Morning I felt better. I didn't think I felt better enough to go home, but I certainly felt better than I had.

Dr. Murphy's nurse came by to check on me and said my lungs sounded good and that my Sub-Q air wasn't getting any worse.

This Sub-Q air was and still is my favorite part of this whole event (except for not dying and getting 90 percocet in one bottle). If you don't know what it is, here's an explanation:

Sub-Q air

Basically it feels like rice crispies under your skin when you roll your fingers around across the top of your chest and lower neck. At first it freaked me out, but once the nurses told me it'd eventually go away and that it wouldn't affect my go home date, I embraced my Sub-Q air.

Student nurses came by to feel it. Visitors felt it too. I let anyone feel it that wanted to. Even my neighbor Anne, who's an IV nurse at St. Joe's, when told of my Sub-Q air, was excited and asked if she could touch it.

"I LOVE Sub-Q air!!" she said.

I was happy to ablige.

Anyway, the nurse said she didn't think that I'd go home that day, and that made me sad. I'd built myself up just knowing I'd go home on Sunday and the thought of staying another day just sucked. I mean, staying another night in the best cardiac hospital I know of wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but I was ready to be home.

So Molly and I sat around and she spent the rest of the morning trying to cheer me up and I spent the morning moping and waiting for football to start.

Then, about 2pm or so, a nurse came in and said "so...are you ready to go?"

What'd she say?

"Your orders came, so we just need to go over some stuff before we can send you home."

YES!!!!

And they did. They went over all kinds of stuff about exercise, activity, resting, medications, etc. The trouble was, almost none of it applied to me.

See, 99.9999% of folks that leave there are leaving with a recently split sternum that's wired shut like a broken jaw. Thusly, they are limited in what they can lift, how much they can lift, and their mobility is severely impaired for months to come.

I, however, only have three little holes in my chest and one hematoma on my left groin, so my stuff's gonna be a lot more like home study I'm guessing.

We packed and got all of my stuff on a cart and they wheeled me to the curb while my 47 month pregnant wife huffed it to get the car from the parking deck. There's nothing quite so manly feeling as sitting around while your pregnant wife packs for you, pushes the cart while you are wheeled outside and everything else she has to do for you while you do nothing. I wish they'd have explained THAT on the waiver forms and the check out list.

I was thrilled to get home and thought I felt great. I had no idea.