Part Two: And Then …..We Had a Normal Moment
There’s a tradition in the world of cancer. When you finish a treatment, there is a bell that can be rung to celebrate the accomplishment. Here’s what is written next to the bell:
On Thursday, when John finished his radiation treatment, he was in the hospital gown being wheeled to treatment on a hospital bed. He didn’t really want to ring the bell from a bed, so we waited for Friday. He earned another “Temporary Leave of Absence” and we took off to enjoy a few hours of normalcy.
First… he rang the bell:
Then we went into the Mayo Clinic… FINALLY… even though he didn’t have an appointment. I took a picture to commemorate the achievement. We fought for weeks to get him there, and in the end the clinic finally came to us in the hospital. The picture is still an achievement. He also earned a pin.
We toured around the subway walking system that surrounds the entire Mayo Clinic area and found a place to have lunch. We sat together for the first time in a normal restaurant and shared some good food. I found myself in tears several times as I had waited weeks for this day to arrive. I had been looking at the different places he might want to go to get food, and I think I picked a good one. We sat together for over an hour, eating and just watching people. Normal non-hospital-staff people.
And then he found the chocolate shop. A few bucks were spent there…. of course!
It had been an exhausting afternoon, so we returned to the hospital room and John took a nap. A few days earlier, a friend I had made on the angiosarcoma facebook page told me that she would be at the Mayo Clinic for treatment on Friday and she suggested that we get together and meet each other. While John napped, I walked over to her treatment room and we talked for over an hour. She has been receiving different treatments for her angiosarcoma for over four years. It was amazing to see her and talk to her about her journey. While her journey is different than John’s, there are still many similarities.
I’m grateful to her for sharing her time with me and helping me to understand more about this path that we are on.
When I returned to John’s room he told me the next piece of great news…… our insurance had approved John’s stay at the Mayo inpatient rehab facility!!!! On Monday we move again. It will be our fifth hospital, his 12th room, and his 56th day in the hospital since April 27th (45th since June 28th). His goal is to be able to go camping with us as a family. Every therapist who works with him tells him that he will be able to do this soon. Each day he is getting stronger. We are still nervous about returning home after all of the medical problems John has faced, but this inpatient rehab stay will finally put us on the path to returning home healthy and ready to battle this beast of a cancer.
We celebrated a bit too much on Friday, and Saturday John was overly sleepy. His sister and brother-in-law made the five hour trip to visit him, but he was hardly able to keep his eyes open. After a good day of rest, he was able to spend good time with them this morning before they had to return home. On Saturday night, they took me out for a meal and forced me to have a couple of relaxing alcoholic beverages. Today, my daughter and her boyfriend took me to Costco (one of my favorite places) to stock up with food for the week. Another small piece of normal returns. Bit by bit we will get there. Hopefully before I return to work.
