Footloose and PICC Line Free

We've been home for a week.

As I sit here and think about that statement, I nearly follow it up with a tidy "but it feels like yesterday..." then don a two-piece pajama set, shut off the vintage nightstand lamp and say good night to June Cleaver; perhaps tomorrow waking up to a simpler existence.

But when I look over the pictures of the past two weeks (which is confusingly becoming more difficult as time goes by), I feel increasingly removed from a situation that seems less like reality and more like a fissure in the time-space continuum swallowed us whole and spit us back out...though not entirely in the same place.

I long for a freeze-frame victory jump with the family as the credits role to inspiring synthesized outro music. As it turns out, our victory jump looks a lot more like bewildered blank stares set on weary faces fronting core-deep hollow exhaustion.

And our outro music?.....Imagination Movers.

We're not out of the woods—but thankfully we're also not stuck up a tree anymore.

Enough with the tough stuff. Let's move on to the good stuff...


Shaney is doing great.

It'll be a while until he's hitting on all cylinders, but he's coming around. I can't believe what he comprehends about this surreal chapter in his life; I can't even put words to it. The only thing I can do is recount a snippet of our experience (one I haven't shared on this blog yet) right before Shane's Flight for Life trip to Children's:

Shane was crashing (as was our world around us). Movement wound down to classic slow-mo hyperawareness—I stayed in Shane's face, ensuring him that everything would be alright. The scene was nightmarish, emphasized by the fact that Shane was also hyperaware and fully experiencing every prod, poke, pull and punch assessed upon his tiny body. In a brief moment of facial freedom from the forced-air bag-assisted breathing, Shane spoke up in an almost cheery voice, "Hey Guys!...I'm feeling better!"

In a moment scary enough to nearly make me pass out, Shane wasn't crying; he was busy thinking of calm and collected ways to make the whole thing stop. Take that vitality and apply it toward the healing upswing he's on now and you'll get a taste for his unstoppable desire to be himself again.

Shaney is done with his antibiotics. His labs came back free of infection, he got his PICC line out tonight and most importantly—he took his first real bath in over two weeks (thank God).

He's playing, smiling, laughing and enjoying.

This evening, the boys had a romping good time simply running laps around the island in the kitchen. Then, of course, it came time to sit and read books for about 12 seconds. After that, more running and general chaos. Given that I've already typed way more than I meant to, I'll let these pictures convey their ~19,000 words. Thanks once again for your boundless love and support.

I'll write more soon.