Goodbye to the Hospital

Day 26 post-transplant
Day 32 in the hospital
Day 1 of the rest of our life

Getting discharged requires a lot of meetings: the pulmonologist, the oncologist, the pharmacist, the hospital social worker, the home health people, the discharge nurse, the list goes on and on.  We receive information from each and wait for the next.

I make Roger one last bowl of soup in the BMT Unit kitchenette.  As I wait for it to heat in the microwave, I notice a large family gathering in the corridor.  They are crying.  Some of them are hugging each other or fumbling for kleenex. Some just look lost.  It's as if my eyes are steel beebees and that family has magnets embedded in them.  "Don't stare," I tell myself.  I just want to get Roger's soup and get back inside his room.  My eyes keep going back and back.  No one asks about a leukemia patient that is absent.  We choose to believe they've gone home.

Later, we see the hospital in our rear view mirror and we know how lucky we have been.