There's no place like home

Well, after more than a week of living in the PICU of Joe Dimaggio Children's Hospital, Zach finally came home Tuesday night.

After alternating nights at the hospital for that week, it's safe to say that both Janine and myself were quite sleep deprived. No matter day or night, there is always the same amount of activity going on in the PICU, and because the glass is so heavily tinted, there was little sunlight to be seen. Put that together for a few days and you really have no idea what time it is, or if it is day or night. Zach wouldn't really ever sleep for more than a few minutes at a time, which didn't make things any easier.

At one point after looking at the clock at seeing it was 9:30 I actually asked the nurse if it was AM or PM. It was really freaky there for a while... If they ever need actors to play the part of Zombies in a horror movie, they could do the casting right in the local PICU - wouldn't even need to use much makeup.

There are a million things that went on while Zach was there, but it would take forever to write, so I'll give it to you in a brief format...

After surgery Zach slept, then couldn't sleep, then wouldn't sleep, had a seizure (maybe), had another, got put on anti-seizure medicine, slept, itched, itched some more, slept, itched, itched some more, got some medicine for the itching, slept, itched, got more anti-itch medicine, slept, couldn't poop, got medicine to make him poop, didn't poop, got an enema, got another enema, still didn't poop, got more medicine to make him poop, pooped, pooped, really pooped, wow look at all the poop, slept, woke up, didn't sleep, got arm splints to stop him from itching, hit various people with the arm splints, got more anti-itch medicine, slept, woke up, complained about the arm splints, learned to itch face while wearing arm splints, got his cast, pooped some more, ate a small bit of food, pooped again, man where is all this poop coming from, got discharged.

That's it in a nutshell.

Did I mention that while Zach was in surgery, I got a call from the marathon people because the Miami Herald wanted to do a story on Josh? He was going to be the youngest runner this year. It killed me to tell the guy that we were not going to be doing the race. I know that given everything we have been through the past couple of weeks that I at least am in no shape to run. Still though, it would have been great to get our story in the paper. The guy I spoke to from the race said to get in touch with them if we are going to do the race next year and they will help with some publicity for NPT, so I guess it's not a total loss.