indecision

It is now day 9 of our stay here and 4 days since the surgery. Our lives have started to intervene in our time here. Our employers, while sympathetic are wondering when we will return. We contemplate plans of action. Should we stay another week? If we do will we have to invoke the family and medical leave act? I'm a college professor, I can't just call a substitute. My classes are based on what I know, there's no good B plan. This week my T.A. and another professor have shown some videos I usually show later in the semester. But I'm out of those and now the question is what to do. But ultimately the question is dad. But at this point we wonder what kind of benefit we are giving him. The doctors encourage us to go back to our lives. For now they say, things are pretty stable. The real issue will come when they take out the RVAD. But they are leaning towards doing that later rather than sooner. While originally they were going to leave it in for 5 days, now they think two weeks is a better idea. You can't put your lives on hold indefinitely, they tell us, and we can handle his care here. Our goal, they assure us, is to get him off the respirator, get him started with some physical therapy and start his recovery even before the RVAD comes out. But there is not much you can do, they tell us. We are conflicted, its hard on our families for us to be gone. There are wage losses for my brother, but even though I still am getting paid, there are practical considerations. We eat out every meal, the hotel though in expensive adds up to hundreds of dollars over our stay already. And his progress seems very slow. We don't see big improvements, but not big declines either. The word they continually use is "stable." We too feel we are in the stable.