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Old Wed Apr 11, 2012, 07:25 PM
Neil Cuadra Neil Cuadra is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Los Angeles, California
Posts: 2,553
It sounds like you have things well in hand, Nurse Mom. Make sure other family members pitch in to help you with your full time caretaking job.

When my wife first came home after her transplant we too were very careful. For example, we avoided fresh fruits and vegetables that we couldn't wash carefully enough, such as lettuce and bean sprouts. It's very hard to thoroughly clean the outside of a cantaloupe, and hard to cut it without getting what's on the outside onto the inside, so we went without it. Relying more than usual on canned food may get boring and be less nutritious, but canned food is safe and that's what counts most at first. And it saves overworked moms some time too!

Frequent and thorough hand-washing is a good habit for all of us, all the time, and now is the time to instill that habit in everyone in your household, including visitors.

If the vacuum cleaner is picking up dog hair then I'll go out on a limb and guess that you have a dog! You have to decide how important the family dog is to morale (for some kids the dog is their best friend). If possible, patients should limit dog contact and should definitely not clean up after pets or empty cat litter boxes. Dogs aren't necessarily full of germs any more than the rest of us, but they live closer to the ground, roam outside, and don't wash their paws when they come in from playing.
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