Homecoming

I finally came home.

Let that sink in for a second.  I came home.  I am living in my own house, and Tuesday will be the eleventh day at home.  I lived at home for almost eleven days over Christmas and New Years.  Other than that I have not lived at home since November 8th.  I almost can't explain the flurry of mixed emotions I had about coming back here.  Longing, craving, needing it so badly, at the same time as fearing it, having anxiety and nervousness about managing all my issues on our own.  Not alone of course, but with my family team.  My husband, my father-in-law and other family members, our amazing friends who build and cook and nurture us however they can. 

As always, it's been a bumpy road.  There have been equipment challenges, like the medical supplier who defaulted to delivering the Medicare standard equipment instead of the specific equipment my therapists and doctors requested.  So I wound up with a bed so narrow I can't roll over in it, with a rickety almost-broken railing on the side I like to get out of bed on, so I can't pull on it to sit up or anything useful like that.  And a slideboard the width of my keester so once I sit on it, there's no remaining board left to slide across... but we're getting those issues resolved, mostly with help from a more reliable supplier, and with a bit of my usual adaptive ingenuity with other household items. 

I have transportation issues, since I still can't stand up well enough to turn and pivot, so I can't get in and out of our family car; I have to hire wheelchair transportation.  We're looking into having some special public transportation pick me up, which will cost significantly less than private transportation.  I'm still on a catheter and still nearly faint when I try to have bowel movements on the commode, so that is also still a work in progress.  I go to outpatient physical therapy several times a week to continue that fight.  But at least progress is being made.

And boy is it worth it.  To be home every morning when my children wake up, to say goodnight to them every night, to fix their ponytails and help with the homework and even take my power chair up the street to pick them up from school, to kiss my husband every single day when he comes home from work where he got a nice promotion to full-time so he could take over my old role as primary breadwinner.  To have family meals together more often than once or twice a week, to get back into that old routine of mediating disputes and handing out time-outs and singing silly songs together and reading to them and every other mundane joy.  

I'm absolutely loving it.