Ellie got her little "tune up" which is to say that was the beginning of allll the things she'd go through over the next year and we headed back home to be a family again.
Our house quickly transformed as you can imagine. Ellie took over a corner of the living room area and we put up as many reminders/checklists on the wall that we could think of. Here's Ellie in her new hospital that evening - her home!
Little one with all that stuff on her face now - hard to get used to, for her especially I'm sure.
My "I sure am glad to be home but what in the world do we do now?" (insert nervous laugh and grin) look.
The most important thing that happened when we got home is we had a visit from the home health supply company that brought us all the things we needed for Ellie. In the hospital we had been told a guy named "Andy" from the local oxygen company was going to come set everything up in our house for us. It was a Sunday but that made no difference to Andy. Jeff spoke to him on the phone in our hospital room before we left and entered his cell number into his cell phone. He put his name in as "Andy Oxygen".
We called him when we were about 30 minutes from home and Andy was sitting in our driveway when we came down the street. He had already come in and and looked around and moved efficiently and systematically when Ellie got through the threshold. As he was leaving he pointed out that he and Jeff knew each other. Perhaps if Mother Teresa had been the one delivering the items (how cool would that have been?!) we would have paid attention to who the person was but in this intense hour of arriving home, we missed it. Andy was one of Jeff's recent students at the Fatherhood 101 class he teaches for the hospital. His wife had just had their baby and he was happy to share with Jeff that he was proudly diapering, rocking, cuddling and talking baby-talk to his new little baby daughter thanks to the empowerment he felt from the class to be a hands-on dad.
Andy has been to our house no less than 15 times this year and he is a delightful, nice friendly face to see at our door. In making frequent deliveries, equipment checks, and exchanging new oxygen tanks he always asks how Ellie's doing. One day in January I shared that she was not doing well enough to put off her surgery any longer and that we would be going to Atlanta soon for her heart operation. He assured me in kind words - "Trust me, I deliver this stuff to a lot of sick children and then suddenly one day they're calling me to come pick it all up and take it away".
Andy Oxygen, I hope that not too long from now you will be at our door doing just that.
