It's good to be home

After five weeks and a day, we finally took my son home from the hospital yesterday. The doctors with all their tests were able to rule out enough of the major diseases to decide it was safe for him to be at home, and all the medications and treatment he was on could be safely given at home.

Now, granted, he's still not 100% well. He's on a few different medications, and his immune system is still recovering from being sick (and some of the treatments he was on). And he still has a PICC line in his arm, since we'll be making repeated trips back to the hospital for blood tests and checkups. But just the fact that we're all home is a huge relief to all of us.

He is definitely getting better, though. As it so happens, for about the last week, he was no longer getting his daily fever spikes, and without the fevers to drag him down, his appetite and strength has been coming back. If I had to make a guess, I'd say there was an infection (secondary to the Kawasaki disease they did manage to diagnose) they couldn't find, but when they happened to give him a final dose of antibiotics as a precautionary measure while they switched medications that affected his immune system, it probably finally wiped it out and let everything else fall into place.

We did get our first taste of the medical bills, though, when we had to pick up the prescriptions. We're hoping that insurance just didn't get billed properly, but three prescriptions ended up costing us close to $500 (and we had to make a trip back to the pharmacy in the hospital, as the drugs aren't carried at any branch close to home). The cashier actually apologized as she rang it up.

One thing at a time, though. At least we're home, all under one roof, sleeping in our own beds.