He's home

Earlier this year, Cathi registered for most of the marathons that she planned for this year.  One of them was the Salt Lake City Marathon.  Which went on yesterday.  Given Sam's steady progress and that he was just fine in my care, I asked her to continue with her run.  She got at 6am and walked to the starting line which was at the Legacy Bridge at the University of Utah.  A distance of only about 1/4 mile from Primary Children's hospital.  There will never be a more convenient marathon morning as this one was.

Sam slept for a couple more hours and we looked outside and saw that the sun was out and no clouds in the sky.  It was a beautiful day.  I asked him if he wanted to go on a ride.  He did, so we got a wheelchair and I took him on a little walk outside in the sunshine on the hospital grounds.  This was just the exposure he needed.

When we got back Dr Antommaria arrived in our room shortly after.  He determined that if we wanted to go home, we could.  Sam nodded "Yes" when asked if he wanted to go home.  We got all our discharge instructions and got our stuff put together and walked to the car.

We picked Cathi up near the finish line, and took her back to the hospital to get her car.  Sam and I drove home and got there just in time to meet the delivery guy for all the home health supplies.  Sam's feeding tube needs to run overnight every night for a couple weeks.  His mouth and throat are still too sore to swallow the amount of food that he needs to properly sustain himself.

Sam missed his family.  I've not seen him smile this much
all week.

We got him setup in the living room and I showed Lucy and Jacob how to help him apply lotion to his sores and how to administer eye drops to allow his very red eyes to heal properly and not scar.  Sam had done a lot of walking today and was tired so he took a nap.  I went out to get all of his prescription meds and when I got back I saw that he was having a nurf sword fight with his other brothers and was smiling.  I even saw him petting Max and Girlfriend yesterday evening.  It was so good to be home!

At 8 o'clock I was going to get a little work done to try and catch up a little, but I was nodding off.  I was SO tired, and just went to bed early.

Sam's journey with SJS isn't over.  We're told to expect that it will be about another 2 weeks before he's back to normal.  But at least he's home and will be able to more comfortable.