We get to go home!

Happy boy!

We awoke bright and early on Wednesday, April 17, 2013 ready to go home. The surgery was a success and Nate seemed to be doing well. We were initially told that he would be able to go home soon after surgery and that's exactly what we were hoping for! Stephen and I slept in Nate's room; I in the "crib" and Stephen on the very uncomfortable chair. My Mom, who spent the night at the convent with Mother Olga (this woman supported us beyond belief!), came back to the hospital to hopefully see us go home. Now, to just wait for the doctor's approval.

Just hanging out waiting for the doctor's approval

All of the nurses that stopped by seemed to think he was doing great and that we'd get the okay to leave. Dr. Kieran, his neuro-oncologist (What is it?) stopped by to talk about what the future would look like. For the first year, Nate would have an MRI (What is it?) every 3 months to check for any growth of the tumor, check the size of his ventricles, and to make sure the ETV (What is it?)  was working. These MRI's would be done at Boston Children's hospital with a follow-up clinic at Dana-Farber's pediatric brain tumor clinic. As long as there was no growth and everything else looked good, once the first year was complete, we would move to MRI's every 6 months. We didn't want to look too far ahead. We were just concerned with trying to make it to the first follow-up appointment. You never really realize how much your life is turned upside when a brain tumor diagnosis is given. When we heard the benign (What does it mean?), we ignorantly thought, "Great, we have nothing to worry about." Man, how uninformed we were. (We'll have more on that later.)

Dr. Goumnerova, his neurosurgeon, came soon after Dr. Kieran. She was the one that had to sign off on his discharge since she was the one who did the surgery. She thought he looked wonderful. She was confident that things would be fine and we wouldn't have any issues leaving. She even said he could go back to gym class the following week! What?? The kid just had 2 brain surgeries in less than a week. Crazy! She did order a follow-up MRI to be done in 6 weeks to ensure the ventricles had proper flow and that fluid wasn't building up again in his brain.

So...it looked like we were able to go home. Shoot...where were Nate's clothes? Oops, Stephen brought Nate's clothes from the initial Friday appointment home and he never brought clothes back to the hospital! The nurses were nice enough to let us leave in his hospital gown and pants. She probably just felt bad for us!

I'm guessing he's not too happy about his outfit!

Until next time, Boston...

Someone was happy to be out, but too tired to enjoy it!