HOME!

That's right. I'm in my bedroom on the second story typing this post and Sara is in her bedroom downstairs talking to people with the computer and the Apria Healthcare guy is fixing our oxygen machine thing.

But the important thing is she's home. We had to kick some asses getting her here (getting the doctors and discharge planner to clear everything), but she's here. The ambulance people showed up at about 6pm to the hospital, we left at 7pm, and we were in the house before 9pm. She's been stable and very, very happy for the past two hours. She's glad to be home around the people she loves, the sights and sounds she misses, and the animals. I let Kenai (our border collie) into her room and her face lit up like a christmas tree.

I'm so glad she's home. No more hospital bureaucracies, no more cross-contamination, no more bullshit. Just Sara, the nurses during the day, and her family and friends. It's going to be wonderful for her state of mind to be around the people and places she loves and remembers.

And to think, it was almost 11 months in hospitals (next week, the 24th, would have marked 11 months). Eleven months of bleak white walls, alarms going off in other rooms, a plethora of nurses and medical equipment, people telling her she can or can't do something. Now it's different... medical equipment is still around her as we need it to ensure her well being, but it's the reassurance that we will help her and push her to do anything she wants, the bright colorful walls and personality that resonates throughout the house, the ability to hear her family going about their lives in the other rooms, knowing that we're not more than a minute away from her.

If home isn't what's best for her, I don't know what is.

Still, though, she's home, and now we can begin a life anew for Sara. I'm excited and ready to see what the future will hold.