Continued from Part Four

My last three days in the hospital were spent in that isolated room at the end of the hall in the hospital that smelled like spoiled vinegar.

By this point I was desperate to get home. I would see my doctors once each day, when they would stop by to check on my breathing and tell me I was progressing well. Haley was eager to have me home as well, and ended up cornering one of my doctors in an elevator, to get him to give a date when I could leave the hospital.

I was feeling much better, my breathing was back to normal, and the pain in my leg was gone entirely. The lower halves of both legs had swelled crazily, which made walking a strange experience, but the nurses assured me that would go away after a week or so.

My swollen legs and feet made me look like Fred Flintstone from the knees down

Twice when shambling back to bed from the bathroom, I suddenly leaned over and vomited unexpectedly. I wasn’t feeling sick, didn’t even know I was going to throw up – just sort of reflexively leaned over and out it came. Both times I pressed the emergency call button for a nurse, and both times it took them between five and ten minutes to make their way out to the end of the hall to see what I needed.

Finally, after fourteen days in the hospital, I was free to go. I had to wear a breathing mask to protect my weakened immune system, and I was exhausted and weak, but I was so happy to be going home that I burst into tears in the car. The fight against my stupid blood cells was just starting, and there was a lot of difficulty ahead, but whatever happened from then on, I knew what I was fighting against and I’d be able to do it from my own home.

Happy to be home again, after losing both my hair and 30 lbs