S Day + 4

I apologize for the late blog....it's been a very busy day and getting a chance to spend time with the boys was great.  How can you tell your kiddos to go to bed when you haven't seen them for more than 72 hours in the past two weeks.  These past two weeks we've spent more time away from them than we ever have.  You hope that the first time you spend a few days away from your kids you're on an exotic beach or cruise somewhere...unfortunately for us that wasn't the case, in fact it may have been quite the opposite.  They were the ones on a great vacation with the grandparents doing all sorts of fun stuff!! 
This was discharge day, though!!  We woke up in the morning (yes, still in the hospital) and started to prepare for our discharge.  Lately, that term has been asked to Shawna about discharge in a whole different context....need I explain more?  I hope not.  Fortunately the answer was always something dealing with "no discharge."  Today was quite the opposite.  We WANTED discharge, that being our release from the hospital. 
It was bitter sweet.  We loved the patience, care, concern, professionalism, hospitality, etc., of the hospital staff.  You start to develop and bond with people that are bathing you, manually draining your catheters (not mine, I fortunately never had to have one, in fact the closest thing I ever had to someone manually draining my catheter was my sophomore year of college on my way home from ACL surgery I needed to make an emergency pit stop but couldn't get up so my dad stopped at a McDonalds, got a large cup and my mom had to hold the cup for me in the back seat of our van...needless to say Sue and I have had a special bond ever since!!), waking you up at all hours of the night to give you medication, etc.  To say goodbye to them was sad but a happy day as well.  We are forever indebted to them for their care and hoping we don't see them for another 12 weeks (or just for a few minutes on our weekly visits back to the hospital). 
But here is what we got to leave to!!

Can't beat that. 
Shawna and I were able to leave the hospital around 1pm which was fine with us as we got another meal in on the hospital room service....yep, I'm definitely Dutch.  So, we cruised our way out of the hospital in Shawna's new four wheeler from Carelinc, her employer. 

 

Well, I couldn't pass up the chance to have a little fun myself!!!  You should see the boys on it. 

We moved back in to some familiar digs at the Holiday Inn in Cherry Hill, NJ where they have a partnership with CHOP.  This is the same hotel we stayed at for the few days of our initial consultation two weeks ago (which seems like an eternity ago).  Shawna and Janet will be here until next week Wednesday before moving to a house in Haverford, PA and John, Peyton, Myles, and I will be here until Monday when we make the trek back to Zeelandia!  All in all, you don't want to be holed up in a hotel for too long but considering the circumstances, we have a two and four year old that love swimming, airplanes, and trains.  Well guess what, the AMTRAK line runs just outside of our hotel windows, we have 2 pools, and tons of planes fly overhead as the Philly airport is not too far away.  So we'll be just fine for the time being. 

We are used to spending this weekend camping with the Lake-O crew up in Clare for Labor Day weekend and we're missing that and hope the gang is having a great time...we'd love to be with you guys, but count on us for next year!!! 



 

So, another big hurdle has been hopped.  Surgery week is over and like I've mentioned, we now hope baby stays put for 37 weeks.  A few people have mentioned they're considering some tributes to 37.  Ben Gardner said he'd wear the number 37 jersey this season but that is illegal (a ref cannot do a 7 on one hand so we'd get a technical foul automatically every game, although Ben may lead our team in that category already...sorry Ben, but you did get one last year at Trine, but I'm SURE you did nothing wrong) and my mom said she was considering a tattoo of the number and actually painted one on her leg using some paint she's using on the interior of a house she's working on.  All a great idea until she realized the paint was some highly toxic solution or something like that and basically burnt a red rash in her leg, so in a sense, she accomplished her mission temporarily. 

Shawna was able to get up and about a little bit more today and we were able to have a pizza dinner out by the pool at the hotel after swimming in the pool for about 3 hours.  We know we still have a long road ahead and some big hurdles to hop but feel that we're now on our feet completely (or in our bed, for Shawna) in Philadelphia and like where we're at.  Once again, more phone calls/texts/emails/and gifts were received today from the wonderful people that you all are. 

I sign off while cuddling with Myles watching the Jungle Book on tv with a huge smile on my face and a happy heart.  The best birthday I've ever had....being with my boys and healthy wife and baby in womb!  Now, if the Wildcats can just pull of the upset of Stanford tomorrow at noon!! 

Can't wait to blog tomorrow...a few days in a hotel with this crew could lead to some good material.  Oh yeah, and I made it through the day without being called an A-hole!!  Success.

 

CHOOSING JOY...as you can see Peyton was all day!!

 

-Jeff