D+21 - Home sweet home...again.

After 29 days in the hospital and 21 days since the stem cell transplant, Courtney returned home!! It was a long day of receiving medications, instructions, paperwork, more medications and more instructions. We finally walked out the doors at 6:30 and returned home just in time to hang out with the kids before putting them in bed.

I have to admit that, after seeing Courtney spend so much of the past four days feeling nauteous, I was rather nervous about the bumpy car ride home. We sailed home without so much as a hiccup. The first thing she wanted to do when we walked in the house was go upstairs to see the kids. I thought 'no way.' Not that I doubt her abilities, but upon returning home after her first month in the hospital in October she couldn't even make it one step. Plus she was kine of wobbly from the medication. But she wanted to go to them. And go she did. Again without so much as a hiccup.

Shortly after putting the kids to bed, the home health nurse came by to bring us the Foscarnet and saline flushes for her twice daily infusions. She showed us how to do it, but there wasn't really much to show since it was pretty much the same routine with the Mycamine that she was on after consolidation chemotherapy. It's pretty simple, but it will take some calculating to deliver the solutions over the correct amount of time as they're gravity fed through a flow valve instead of through a pump like at the hospital. The first bag started shortly after 9:00 PM and was supposed to take 2 hours but took 2 and a half instead. The Foscarnet should be done just before 2:00 AM and then it's two more hours of saline. It's kind of like bringing home a newborn baby that has to be fed and changed every couple of hours. Hopefully will get this on a better schedule and, hopefully we'll get this down to just once a day instead of two.

I'm not sure if being home has anything to do with it, but Courtney's had her best night by far since the past week. Not only did she eat a chicken pot pie (more than she had at any one time for a few days), but she didn’t experience any of the overwhelming nausea that had plagued her invariably the past week. Now she's sleeping soundly in her own bed for the first time in almost a month. Nothing beats being in your own home, in your own bed. Home truly is SWEET!!