Day Eleven-Thirteen- Amelia Is Home

Melissa and I spent Saturday night at the hospital and brought Amelia home with us Sunday afternoon.

Amelia
Amelia came home with her NG tube and 7 types of medication. I don’t mind getting up at all hours to do feeding, but I will hide from the NG tube at all cost. Fortunately, Melissa has accepted responsibility for NG maintenance until I build up enough courage to step up to the plate.

Around 10pm last night, we discovered that one of the medicines doesn’t sit well with our little patient (we have the laundry to prove it) but like the naïve parents that we are, we soldiered on with another batch of food to replace the evening feeding lost.

Discharge Dog-Tired
Throughout this whole adventure, we had always thought that the two of us would be choked up as we made our Sick Kids departure.

But the fact is—we are just too spent to be emotional about it. We are sick of the late night/all day trips to the Cardiac ward. We are fed up with having to fight through the commute. We are sick of being separated from our sickest child, but are also mildly offended that the hospital has the expectation of 24 hour parental presence on the floor (how is that possible with two other ones at home?).

The whole ordeal has left us completely drained.

When you spend really any length of time at Sick Kids, you develop a ‘sixth sense’ that is attuned to what everyone else is going through. In very little time at all, in addition to the concerns for your own child’s welfare, you also shoulder stress for all the other families that are in the same boat as you.. You don’t know anything about them, but you can’t help but care for their kids as you worry about your own. It’s an odd feeling— sort of like tunnel vision with portholes. And it can wear you down.

We are happy Amelia is home, and while we can’t help but feel some sense of relief, we know that there are still a lot of challenges ahead.