Ryan's home!!! It feels so good to bring him home. Sounds strange, but it's reminiscent of bringing a baby home from the hospital!!
On Tuesday, we'll make the drive to Boston for follow-up. We'll need to plan ahead a little bit since Ryan can't eat the cafeteria food. He'll have blood tests and an appointment with Dr. Cutler's transplant physician assistant, and maybe a platelet transfusion. And most likely we'll drive home to our own beds.
Although we're not completely out of the woods, it feels like we're over the hump. Ryan can now consider himself a cancer survivor!!
Ryan still has lots of meds to take, nausea and a messed up GI tract, a central line that needs to be flushed with saline and heparin solutions daily and carefully covered for showers. He needs to take his temperature twice daily and weigh himself daily. But he can shower, go for walks, sleep without being interrupted, eat his favorite foods (minus uncooked veggies & fruit and his favorite jalapenos).
We all get to sleep in our own beds. Tim and the girls have a long weekend due to Veteran's Day. A rare opportunity to just be together as a family, relaxing, watching TV, sleeping late.
Of course, this would be the weekend that Kaia is coughing...... So she's semi-quarantined in her room with all her electronic toys, and discouraged from being in the same room as Ryan.
In the past, I've been fairly cavalier about hand-washing, etc. Believing that my kids need to develop immunity. Avoiding hand sanitizers as generally unhealthy because they wipe out the body's good bacteria as well as disease-causing germs.
But that was then...... Sophia is being careful to clean the doorknobs with antiseptic wipes and do the daily bathroom surface cleaning. MeiLin is learning to clean her hands with antiseptic wipes before she empties the dishwasher or sets the table. I have to learn to use the paper hand towels when I'm cooking rather than the terry cloth hand towels which could harbor moisture, meat juices and harmful bacteria. After we do the dishes, we spray down the counters with disinfectant as if we were a commercial food service kitchen.
But mostly, we just relax and enjoy the blessing of being together at home. At Dana Farber and Brigham & Womens - even though they do fantastic things - there were always many who were so much worse off than Ryan. We do feel truly blessed. I have rarely cried throughout this whole ordeal, but today in church as we sang hymns I couldn't stop the tears - of gratitude.
A million thanks for all the prayers, fasting, gifts, emotional support, meals, help with house cleaning and so much more.
---Barb
No comments:
Post a Comment