I’ve been saying for a couple weeks now that it has felt like a Monday on repeat. We’ve lost touch with time and dates; two weeks has simultaneously both flown by and crawled.

Mom is ecstatic to be home. Holding off for now on the Mom/Mavy reunion for obvious reasons. One, dog hair is just a lot while someone is healing an open wound, no matter how many times you vacuum. Two, he loves a good Pyr paw whack and 59 staples + that giant foot won’t pair well together.

I know everyone is dying to know her first meal since I’m sure if you talked with her, you heard about the food they served there and if you didn’t chat with her, you could only imagine.

Upon delivery back to the homeland, she requested a crowd fav. We immediately came through. Rigatoni vodka with a chicken cutlet on the side. Key piece of information is that the chicken has to be on the side. It has to stay hot and MUST be crispy or it’s just not up to her standards.

Something special about watching your momma enjoy one of her favorite meals, happy, comfortable.

This energizer bunny has been going all day. Everytime she sits down, she stands up five seconds later to do something else. I keep having to remind her that this is the first day and that she should rest. I know she won’t, she never does, but it’s so important here.

I have to let her go a little bit, gotta let the bird fly the nest. She has a new, working liver. Her lungs are no longer full of fluid so she can finally breathe and walk more than 20 feet without stopping. It’s a really weird feeling because for the past three years, we have been handling every moment of her life and it’s so nice to be able to see her up and about but what step comes right now?

Everytime someone would ask me, “How’s Mom?” Whether it was a coworker, a friend of mine, a stranger to me but a friend to mom, I never knew how to answer. “‘Shitty.’ ‘Each hour is literally different.’ ‘A rollercoaster… but you get stuck as soon as you go over the biggest hill.’ ‘Yesterday we were dying at the hospital but today we got discharged and she wants pancakes sooo we’re headed to ihop.’” But instead of saying any of those things I usually answered “she has her good days and bad!” There are seldom people who got the full DL on Mom’s sitch because I was always nervous to share even the smallest amount of details that would freak people out.

People who have experienced medical trauma or have been around someone you are caring for going through a major medical event know the exact feeling inside that you get when people start acting weird around you. Al, Ry, and I get along so well because we kind of just cope by laughing the bad shit off. When we get home from the hospital, we make sure our evenings are filled with laughs and love and an occasional cry (it’s soooo good for you). We make sure we spend our nights together and decompress with the dogs until Mom comes home, every time she’s on a long term stay.

Alex and I secretly mourn our last hang out night, always. It instantly brings us back to our shared childhood bedroom and reminds us of constantly getting yelled at for screwing around and playing games when we were supposed to be asleep. The only difference now as adults is that we don’t have a bedtime, we just make a bigger, more expensive mess by starting new hobbies, and our parents aren’t yelling at us, Ry is usually just staring at us and shaking his head. So, although always excited to return back to ‘real-life,’ we always miss the sistasista time. After all, 21 months apart is practically twins, we can pretty much read each other’s minds.

Tonight, we ate pizza and shared funny, borderline inappropriate dinnertime hospital stories.

Tonight, 3 transplant survivors stood in our living room together. Two liver transplant recipients and a double lung transplant girlie. 3 strong ass women.

Tonight, Mom gets to sleep in her own bed, Alex too. I get to curl up with Mav until he gets his shit together and listen to Goose roam the halls all night.

Tonight, we spent the night loving and laughing and although all of us aren’t physically together tonight when we go to sleep, we’re all home and that’s all that matters.

xoxo

nell