Day 132: Thomas Is Home!

Duplicated on our CaringBridge site for permanent record here.

March 29, 2021, written by Mama

132 days in the hospital

• 63 in PICU
• 28 in the Oncology ward
• 15 at In-Patient Rehab, and 
• 26 back in the Oncology ward.

We departed for the hospital on November 18, anticipating a 5-day stay. After the changeover of a new year, 12 surgeries, 93 units of blood transfusions, and 132 days, Thomas came home.

I have been trying to draft this announcement all day, but while Katherine the writer hopes one day to be able to write beautifully about this day, Katherine the Mama is unable to do so right now. My heart is overflowing with a maelstrom of emotions.

First luggage cart

Second luggage cart

Driving home

Welcome Home sign

The whole family together for the first time in four and a half months!

Siblings

I would like to share a blessing God gave to two women today because--it is too colloquial to say "sometimes God just likes to show off"--but maybe you will get my meaning. Seven years ago, a woman named Margaret whom I barely knew at the time (but whom I have since come to call friend!) experienced tragedy when her young son had a hemorrhagic stroke and spent two months in this very children's hospital. At the time, I signed up to deliver her family a meal and, quite fortuitously, it turned out that I delivered the meal on the day they were discharged to home. 

My friend Margaret now lives out of state, but she still travels back to our state for her son's specialist medical appointments and he just so happened to have an appointment today, March 29. Knowing she would be in town, months ago she signed up to bring my family a meal. In fact, she prayed that she might be the one to deliver our homecoming meal . . . but how could that be possible? As if that would ever happen! 

Apparently God desired to give delight to both of us, and so I want to give glory to Him. In fact, Margaret did provide our homecoming dinner. Who could ever have thought of such symmetry except God?

Tucked into his bed at home

Home

by William Henry Dawson

The house in which one lives is but a shell

Of stone, and wood, and clay with paint spread o'er,

And when sweet stories about home we tell,

We mean not just the house alone, but more.

When one has kissed his loved ones a good-bye,

And for a fortnight travels to and fro,

Returns unto his home the latch to try,

And finds the pesky little thing won't go,

And takes his night key and unlocks the door,

And finds the house as quiet as a mouse—

His wife and babies, just the day before

Had gone—it is not home. It's just a house.

It's then one comes to really understand

The meaning, in its truest sense, of home.

It's then that all the houses in the land,

Builded earth wide and high as heaven's dome,

With floors of gold, and walls of jassamine,

And ceilings all bedecked with jewels rare,

Mantels of pearl, and bric-a-brac thrown in,

Would not be home, with wife and babes not there.