We are HOME!!!!!

At 9:40 a.m., Judy left the hospital after 22 long days! You can tell from her gesture when she got out of the wheelchair and into our neighbor Irene's van how elated and victorious she felt.

Just minutes beforehand, Vanessa, who had been our intake nurse on day one and with whom Judy developed a special, very deep relationship, stopped by the room. Once again, the photo (at the bottom of this post) speaks volumes.

On the way home we stopped by Dr. Howell's office to get an in-service on how to administer a daily dose of liquid antibiotics. Judy will stay on the antibiotics for about 10 to 14 days. It will only be one bag a day, taking around 30 minutes to administer. We learned how to do so by using her central line.

When we got to the house, Judy was beaming. "My house," she kept repeating several times. Now she's sacked out--after all, the three hours between discharge and finally arriving home were significantly more than she had been up for the entire last week!

So now starts the second big stage of our race: Home recovery before the onset of chemo. I think that in many ways things will be easier, but we also realize that we can't fall back on the nurses. But I am sure that our local friends will want to continue to pitch in and sit with Judy when I am in school, need a break, or run off to the last mountain bike race late next week. And we hope that some of you have some good movies that we may borrow so that Judy is not going to become bored and will do things around the house that she's not supposed to do!

Whatever this next stage will bring, we're ready. We've been looking forward to this day, and now we can go on with renewed energy. I would assume that in the next few days Judy will write a few things here on the blog herself.

We'll keep you posted in regard to her progress. All of you can pat yourselves on the shoulder because without you the past three weeks would have been much, much harder, on both of us.

Jürgen