We left the hospital Friday afternoon. Coming home is always a bit of a challenge. Hope is excited on arrival but then clingy and tentative for a few days. We've spent so much of the last two months in the hospital that I think she misses its routines, rhythms and personalities.
I find the transition a challenge too. The first 24 hours feel like a great thaw. It's always jeans-and-sweatshirt weather at Hopkins. We've watched winter turn into spring and spring to summer through the giant windows - but we haven't felt it much. I like to come home and sit on the stoop in the blistering sun.
But there's another numbness that I need to melt away - and it makes the quick transitions more difficult. The beautiful toddlers and preschoolers with wispy bald heads don't seem out of the ordinary to me anymore. With other parents and hospital staff, we trade stories about the cute things they say, weird foods they eat, their little kid "crushes" on a favorite nurse or doc. Their diseases, the scheduled poisons or complications that led to their admissions, are forgotten to make the days and weeks in the hospital bearable. The teens whose diagnoses I can only guess at stay behind closed doors, while their tight-lipped parents smile at the little ones doing laps around the unit.
These few days at home allow for a thaw of this protective shell - to feel the sadness and fear of these realities before we jump back in.
Wednesday. It's her last scheduled admission, for a 50% reduced dose of methotrexate.
