Home from the City

A Really Short Update

After a few days of hope-giving hints, Noah was allowed to come back home yesterday afternoon. After our "early discharge" at 2:00, an hour and some of getting medications together and then muscling our way out of Toronto traffic, we were back home sometime before five o'clock. With great relief and exhaustion and worry we now work towards helping Noah regain strength and health before his second stem cell transplant at SickKids which will happen in about three weeks.

Noah is pretty weak and thin. He is also having trouble keeping all of his feeds down so we try to delicately balance medications and nutrition and activity to keep as much in Noah's tummy as possible. He'll be back at SickKids for a follow up visit on Friday and we really hope that by that point he is more stable so that he is able to remain home for the duration of his recovery time.

And we have good reason to hope for this. Since being home, Noah's enthusiasm, motivation and joy have just sky-rocketed. Whereas on Monday I was excited to see Noah take five or six steps across the hospital floor, today he is running back and forth between rooms, crawling in blanket forts and taking shots with his hockey stick.

A big reason for this, of course is that he his sisters are here. Their love and care and attention is the ultimate motivation for him. Because they were with family, Noah was unable to see them until I was able to bring them back today. And after five hours of being a family that is together under one roof once again, we are feeling blessed and exhausted all at the same time. The two aren't always mutually exclusive.

And so it is time for some healing. Noah's body will need to do the bulk of this work but it will also be the work of this time of family reacquaintance and renewal.

Thank you for all your prayers and thanks be to God for this time.