First week of chemo is over and we get our quick treatment of Vincristine then they will check us out.  Well that is what they told us at the beginning of the day.   It’s not always as easy as it seems or should be to get approved to leave the hospital.

Everything is tracking that we will get to go home today 7/1 and  after sleeping on this inflatable mattress for the last 15 nights we are excited at the possibility of getting to sleep in our own bed.  We started the day off letting our nurse know we are scheduled to leave today and if she could help facilitate this process we would be much appreciative of that.  She said she understood and would do everything she needed to get us out the door.  We needed to get clearance from the oncologist, neurosurgeon and get our chemo.  If her blood counts are good after all that we could go home.   Well we got sign off from the oncologist pretty quickly but we had to wait to get the chemo until 1:30PM so we knew we wouldn’t be leaving until the afternoon.   Right around the time we were waiting for chemo I asked if they have sign off from the neurosurgeon yet and they said they were just waiting to hear back from them.  I laughed and said if you are waiting to hear back from him specifically it was going to be a while since he had just left the country last Saturday for the next two weeks.  Once they heard that they called the neurosurgeon that was on call and he was in surgery so we would have to wait until he got out to get the clearance.

Chemo was given but still not clearance.  Finally about 5PM we got the word that we have been signed off on and they were putting together the paperwork.   I have never been so eager to be in my own home.  In a way it was an accomplishment to me just to be bringing our baby home.   I told Audrey we were going home and the picture to the right was her response.

Now we had to get all this stuff that we had been amassing over the last 16 days home.  Between the stuff Audrey was given from the many cancer foundations to the things from nurses and friends we have collected a lot of stuff.  And we had all of Melissa and I’s things to take home.  Once they said the paperwork was coming we started packing.  3 trips and with the wagon the back of the van was filled with stuff and the paper work was done.