Hi Everybody,
We are out of the hospital!! Tuesday, the docs decided that our Heather was up to leaving the hospital. Her blood counts continue to be strong and overall her health is good. We spent two nights in a dippy apartment next to the hospital, and when I could not take it anymore, Kim, Mom Weaf and Grammie Neal cleaned and scrubbed a couple of rooms for us to move her into in Reading where we had a long awaited and teary family reunion. Finny, much to Heather’s relief, was full of smiles and cuddles when he saw her for the first time in three weeks. He could not keep his eyes off her all day. He woke this morning full of giggles and happy noises and, after his morning bottle, is now asleep in bed with Heather.

Remarkably, Heather had a very difficult time leaving the hospital. After two weeks of feeling like a caged animal, she found the thought of leaving the support and safety for the hospital terrifying. She was literally shaking with fear and nearly had a panic attack. She was scared of cancer coming back, scared of germs, scared of collapsing in the elevator, and scared to face Finny. It was all very overwhelming. I would like to say that I handled all of this gracefully, but it was all of my strength not to lose patience with her. In my mind, it was OVER. It was time to celebrate and look forward to getting home. I could not figure out why I was unable to ease her fears. Wednesday, we had a check up with the docs and Dr. Joyce said to her. “Everyone spends a lot of time preparing you for the trauma of the transplant, but no one tells you how hard it is once the transplant is over.” She explained that for most patients, the end of treatment is the hardest because there are no defenses against the cancer anymore. Prior to this Heather focused on each upcoming ordeal knowing that there was always another to come. By necessity she has had to face one thing at a time. Now it is time to face CANCER. Dr. J. told Heather that your family and friends have already dealt with this. They have gone through this particular terror for you already and want to crack the champagne bottles now. She said that people want to celebrate and you just want to cry. (of course that opened the flood gates!) It made us both feel a lot better to know that our reaction to the end of this is entirely natural and explainable. Dr. Joyce then went on to say that Heather is likely to feel anxiety an uncertainty about being a mother. Post partum depression of some sort is likely because of the guilt and fear she has about not being able to be a good mother. (Bingo!) She recommended a counselor to deal with all of these things. To quote her again, “Heather, you are going to be fine, but is best not to ignore this or try to deal with it alone. In six weeks it will be a distant memory.” In a conversation with Dr. Buff yesterday, Heather expressed some of her fears about her tumor and he told her, “Heather, we really are not waiting for this to come back.” I think he wants her to understand that all of the follow up tests and things are to support her recovery and to make sure they catch anything that could possibly go wrong.

Seeing Finny yesterday has healed much of what ails Heather, but she is still up and down. Fear, grief, and pain, come and go in waves and so I would say she is surfing right now. I know now to expect all of this crap to come and go for awhile. I really feel strongly that cancer is over and that worrying about it is a waste of precious time, but it took me months to get there. The waves come for me too, but they are small enough to be no good for surfing.

We go back into the city for more tests today, and will likely have to go back in early next week. We could come home for the weekend, but the thought of packing up a baby and a transplant patient for just a couple days sounds exhausting. For now, we are content to be here at Kim and Tiff’s where we have support when we need it and distraction when we need that too. As soon as these hospital visits spread out a bit. (Sometime next week?) we will head for home. Can’t wait to see everybody!

Love,
Dick