Patience

A Few Fun Facts From Friday:

1. The nurses and doctors taking care of Audrey here are hands down amazing. She's doing well, spent the day deep under, and outside of virtual land my key accomplishment for the day was more or less eating twice and getting a shower. The worst thing about being in the ICU is that you have to go to a common room to eat, and you have to go to the far end of the hospital to take a shower. The BEST thing about being in the ICU, at least for anxious introvert writer types, is that you have to go to a common room to eat and go to the far end of the hospital to take a shower, after checking in at the parent center to get a key. Turns out, in person human interaction with strangers is a good thing.

2. Our day nurse was an intelligent blond woman named Susannah. The wonderful social worker who stopped by for a great 30-minute conversation was named Susan, also blond. The chaplain whose visit I missed during soup was named.... Susan. I was feeling the solidarity.

3. Two cool people I met yesterday while venturing into the world beyond our room were other moms whose daughters are in the ICU. The first's beautiful one-year-old was newly diagnosed with a very similar rare condition to the friend I wrote about last week who moved to Oregon to continue the miraculously successful treatment of her daughter's pituitary condition with cannabis oil. I made sure the two of them got in touch, and she told me lots of great details about the huge annual Salem Haunted Happenings event just north of Boston at Halloween, where the original Ghostbusters car is a key part of the parade. She ain't afraid of no ghost.

4. I met the second mom during an awkward moment. I was trying not to look too ridiculous while endeavoring to catch a whiff of each of the 6 soup flavors in the cafeteria, and kinda failing. I told her that each one I smelled was my new favorite. (The fact that I'd just had a major question answered by the EA team--whether they suspected the weird blister in Audrey's esophagus could have been precancerous, they didn't--miiight have had something to do with my newfound enjoyment of those smells.) The mom laughed and noticed that my name tag said we were both in the ICU, so she invited me to sit with her. Her teen daughter has had numerous profound complications following a years-ago liver transplant, so we sat chatting about how her home in Maine was just 2 hours drive away (took me much longer than that to drive home to New Bedford, Mass after appointments the day before surgery), and other little things like liver cancer and the longest-in-the-country life expectancy of Maine residents. It was really nice talking with her, and while we sat enjoying our lemon ginger chicken noodle soup, her daughter's liver specialist happened to walk by on his way to get lunch--probably soup--and casually told her that she'd just been moved into first position on the waiting list for a new liver transplant.

5. After we parted I realized that one of the moms I met is in Room 8, the other in 18, while we're in 28. That made me second guess my memory but I'm pretty sure. Funny, huh?

Audrey continues to heal under the paralytics. They're going to try lifting them a bit today to see if she'll keep her chin down per Dr J's orders, but might put her back on if not. I, on the other hand, am doing pretty well at keeping my chin UP. Missing my vibrant silly girl but being patient. Your texts, messages, calls, comments and prayers really mean the world. Thanks.