I'm So Stuffed I Could Pop

Update on Husband: You get the guy out of the hospital and the hospital gets out of the guy. Or...wait. I'm not sure that's a real saying since I just made it up. What I mean is this: Take an ailing Husband home and within a couple days his color is coming back and he's got an appetite for home cookin'!

That's right! Blood levels are looking good, with an uptick in platelets and an increase in red blood cells. I am giving him daily injections of Neupogen, which is an extremely expensive drug that stimulates the production of white blood cells. It's all in the wrist. The injections that is, not the growth of white blood cells.

Around the house, Husband wears a mask and we have to keep Lysol wipes in strategic places to make sure things are wiped down and sterile. In our bedroom and in his office, he is the only one who is allowed to go in (besides me, of course). The kids can't hug him yet. A couple more weeks and his immune system will be strong enough for all these precautions to be set aside, which will be nice. Every day he feels stronger!

..................

I was taking the boys to the libry when Sian called for a ride. She had been playing with the Chamber Strings on a float during the high school Homecoming parade (HOW?? I don't know. Playing a stringed instrument on a rocking flatbed trailer has got to be tricky.), and as I had just pulled up to the intersection outside her school, I was there in 30 seconds.

She got in the car and said, "I'll make dinner tonight. I just decided."

Well! Never looking a gift horse in the mouth, I happily accepted.

"Let's get home, then," she said.

I told her I had been on my way to take the boys to the library, a place where she could easily spend hours and hours (like her mother, of course), but she seemed agitated about it. Odd. But we went nevertheless, and I had her watch the littlest boy play with the toys while I tracked down Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and one of those old crafting books from the '80s that so plentifully populate the shelves in the mid 700s. I thought the girls could get some inspiration for a project or two.

Joseph decided on an armful of Dr. Seuss books, Sian ran after Little Gary repeatedly, and I got us checked out.

When we pulled up at home, there were people waiting on the front porch. Sian seemed not at all surprised. In fact, she nodded knowingly and hauled Little Gary off down the street and around the corner, her sisters and Joseph in tow. The people on my front porch were three angels bearing gifts: a homemade dinner for two, complete with yellow rose in vase and candles with matches, and a BLUEBERRY Marie Callendar's pie (someone's been reading my blog!). The kids were taken care of for a couple hours so Husband and I could enjoy a Friday night date. Then I understood that Sian had been in the know and trying to get me home.

Now, a lot of people have done a lot of lovely things for us (for which I can't express enough appreciation), but I was never so surprised. What a perfectly beautiful gesture that was. Although Husband couldn't eat the lettuce or the dressing in the Cafe Rio Pork Barbacoa Salad with Creamy Tomatillo Dressing (he is on a reduced microbial diet, meaning he can't eat anything that isn't fully cooked), both of us happily munched away. When the kids came home, we let them have some pie.

Thank you, Linnea, Denise, Denise's husband, and Bro. and Sis. B. for putting that together. Husband and I appreciated the time alone to just enjoy our delicious meal and unwind a bit.