Tuesday, February 18th
The day started very early for me, around 1:30am, when they did the final blood draw. I was awake and as much as I tried, I was too wired and excited to go back to sleep. I spent the balance of the night reading the rest of the China Study book my friend bought for me. Really good stuff on cancer and diet, but more centered around tumor-based cancers (those are bad too). I was unhooked from the IV all night which was a strange new freedom. I was able to roll over in bed for example. In the morning, it took me a while to realize that I could just get up and take a shower whenever I wanted to, no need to call the nurse to unhook me. It sounds strange, but after 25 days, it was now hard to start adjusting to these new freedoms.
I spent the morning packing up and doing some work while I waited for the doctor parade to begin. One by one they came in to get one last charge tacked on and sign off on discharge orders. I needed all discharges signed before they would remove the PICC line. My sister and brother-in-law showed up and I asked her to shave my head down. The hair had been hanging on pretty well, but after this morning's shower, it was looking sparse and ugly, time to go. It took some work as we didn't have any clippers to get it all the way down. But the result seems rather beautiful, don't you think?
The day started very early for me, around 1:30am, when they did the final blood draw. I was awake and as much as I tried, I was too wired and excited to go back to sleep. I spent the balance of the night reading the rest of the China Study book my friend bought for me. Really good stuff on cancer and diet, but more centered around tumor-based cancers (those are bad too). I was unhooked from the IV all night which was a strange new freedom. I was able to roll over in bed for example. In the morning, it took me a while to realize that I could just get up and take a shower whenever I wanted to, no need to call the nurse to unhook me. It sounds strange, but after 25 days, it was now hard to start adjusting to these new freedoms.
I spent the morning packing up and doing some work while I waited for the doctor parade to begin. One by one they came in to get one last charge tacked on and sign off on discharge orders. I needed all discharges signed before they would remove the PICC line. My sister and brother-in-law showed up and I asked her to shave my head down. The hair had been hanging on pretty well, but after this morning's shower, it was looking sparse and ugly, time to go. It took some work as we didn't have any clippers to get it all the way down. But the result seems rather beautiful, don't you think?
By 11:30 I finally had all the required signatures and the nurse came to pull out the line. By then, both my sisters, both brother-in-laws, and Joanne had arrived to have lunch together. Oh, my niece was there too! We ate lunch downstairs in the cafeteria like normal folks. I didn't have to wear a mask to go outside the room, didn't have tubes dangling out of my arm, didn't have to worry about not eating raw vegetables due to bacteria. Just a normal person. After lunch, I had to say farewell to everyone else as they all had to get on the road back to their lives. Huge thank you's again to all of them for the support and love.
Joanne and I returned to the room for the final check out. We finished packing, waited for the obligatory wheelchair, then filled the wheelchair with all the stuff we had to carry out to the car and walked OUT THE DOOR! The ride home was overwhelming on my senses I found. But it felt great. We were home by 4:30 and began the hug line. A few neighbors spotted us coming in and rushed over to say hello. Summer, our dog, was able to say hello for the first time since I left. She's a hound / mutt that likes to chase rabbits around the neighborhood whenever she can break away from the house. So when the front door opened for her to say her big hello, she sniffed me briefly and took off running to see what she could find. So much for a big welcome home. The kids were much happier to see me with big hugs all around. Hard to describe how great it all felt.
The past few days had been exhausting and the past few nights only yielded 3-4 hours of sleep each. After eating a little dinner, I crashed on the couch for over two hours. I was able to sit up and watch the Olympics for a while, kiss the kids goodnight and tuck them in, then went to sleep, in my own bed.
That's awesome! Welcome back!!
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