Road toward home

Today’s update is actually an update from Susie, because she got to visit Pop in the hospital! Given the COVID precautions Duke Medical has been taking, Susie essentially had to drop Dad off at the curb to check in for his transplant two weeks ago. He has had no in person contact with any friends or family since that afternoon. So, needless to say, it was smiles all around when she arrived:

Besides joy, the stated purpose of today’s visit was starting to plan for Pop’s care once he leaves the hospital. As Pop mentioned in an earlier blog post, Duke Medical won’t even accept you into their transplant program if you don’t have someone available and willing to serve as your primary caregiver following the surgery. There’s a lot to do: multiple meds to take at the same time each day, tracking vital signs and glucose levels, recovery exercises and—perhaps the most challenging—sticking to a restricted diet for the first year post transplant.

In addition, given the current global pandemic, Duke has stipulated that Pop should not plan to travel for the next 9 months, nor have any visitors besides caregivers until he leaves Durham (at least a few months from now). While it’s incredibly surreal for Molly and I—and I’m sure for many of you—to not know exactly when we can see Dad again, we are deeply grateful to Susie and Ann and Lex Alexander for stepping up to be the mighty local caregiving team. ❤️

But what all of this of course means is that the hospital staff is preparing for Pop to leave them! There is no firm date for when he will be discharged, but he’s down to 2 chest tubes now and transition plans have begun. Hospitals can perform miracles to get our bodies in basic working order, but as many of you know from experience, it’s usually at home where you actually begin to heal. Until then, Pop will keep making laps around his hospital unit—and we hope not too many days from now they will just let him walk right out of there.