We missed our first day of posting yesterday because we took some much needed time for ourselves out of the city to continue getting things prepped for the return of the jedi.

We spent the better half of our day today back in East Harlem, checking in, and let me tell you, all the lines are out, no monitors, free roam of the building.. we’re ready.

Let me clarify the “we’re ready” part. We’re ready for mom to leave the hospital and come home but are we truly ready for the next part? The hardest part. People don’t know that the hospital part is a walk in the park and I don’t mean that insensitively. Those that have ever been caregivers would agree.

At the hospital you have an extra 10 sets of hands, an extra person there to reinforce a new safety measure, access to information, doctors, and medical equipment.

When you get home, it’s a whole other world. Our lives will forever be different, in the best way possible, however will take some getting used to, from all parties involved… I’d be lying if I said otherwise.

On our visit in today we talked about all the things we wanted to do and places we wanted to eat and how we truly didn’t even have any time there but how it’s kind of nice that we got to only spend two weeks there. Then we quickly went back to being bummed that we didn’t get a try all these restaurants we had on our lists, so today we decided to go to three different spots for a lil treat to start our day off.

Our first stop was a cute little place that had a delish vanilla croissant. Our second stop was a bagel shop that obviously was mediocre at best because NJ bagels are better than NY bagels, sorry, but we had to try it. And our third and final stop was the most scrumdiddly of the three.

This beautiful cinnamon sugar french cruller will live on forever in my heart. This was the best thing this city has brought to my lips in these past two weeks. Highly recommend.

Anyways, we had to do a little maneuver to get into the building today because they are doing construction but there was something so peaceful about walking around their campus today. To give you some insight, it is a GHOST town on the weekends. You might see someone orrrrr you might not. The hospital is silent, always clean, not overly white (thank god), and there is never anyone around to give you directions, so you better hope and pray you can read a map.

So after doing this small walk around which felt like being on the back lot of a universal movie, we finally got to our elevators, made it insanely fast upstairs (perks of weekend ghost town) and finally got to see Mom.

Small pains here and there but nothing this lady can’t handle; she’s dealt with way worse. The liver team told us today that pending all labs tomorrow morning go well, we get to take our girl HOME.

Whatever and whoever you believe in, send em a thought tonight for the coming weeks if tomorrow is the day.. that’s where we will need them the most.

I often think about the other patients and their families and I always smile because you never know what type of day someone is having.. today, I had a tougher time smiling because it’s been overwhelmingly emotional lately. I was walking back from the cafeteria and I saw this in the window:

Instantly made me smile. Pasta lover club?? Yes PLEASE. Also, these are the insides of the building, each patient has a window in this building on every floor. If it doesn’t face outside, it faces an open skylit pavillion that is filled with natural light and dim soft light at night. I kind of love it. Patient first care.

Tomorrow look out for an early update.

Cross your fingies and toesies.

xoxo

nell