We think that tonight was our last dressing change!  Tomorrow at 11am we meet with the Pediatric Surgeon who put Naomi’s Broviac line in place.  He will examine the line and schedule it to be removed, hopefully later this week.  We return to COH next Monday and the line is supposed to be out by then.

Naomi continues to become more acclimated to “normal” life.  Tonight, we went to the park after Aaron came home from work.  Some of the children walked down, and others rode bikes.  Once there, we played a game of baseball.  It was so much fun to have all of us playing together.

We continue to work through the emotional healing aspect of all that has happened.  As expected, some children have anger towards Naomi, or more accurately towards her illness.  This seeps out little by little, like a power cooker that needs adjusted and reset.  I know that since her illness caused 6 full months of trauma that it will take at least that long for us to process all the events of those 6 months.  I also know that emotional healing takes a lifetime and that it will likely require us all to continue to have patience with each other and revisit repeatedly what being a family means…. None of us asked to be in this situation, but together is how we have to deal with it.  Some days will be better and other days will not.  That is just how life is for everyone, illness or not.  The children are learning a lot about character and taking difficult circumstances in life as best as we can.  Some day, we will all look back at 2013-2014 as a year of tremendous growth for us all.

As we are began our 7th week of school for the 2013-2014 school year (because we started over upon arriving home at the end of March), Naomi is finally “unhospitalized” enough that she self starts in the morning with her independent work and willing completes ALL of her assignments for the day.  This took a lot of patience on my part, as there were quite a few weeks where she would refuse to do any work, pout through the work she did complete, and sometimes just run away to another room to play while in the middle of a lesson.  I knew she needed time to heal mentally and emotionally to be ready to learn.  It was a lot like the “unschooling” process, so I have decided to call it being “unhospitalized” enough to be ready to move forward with life.  But now, she is flying through her daily assignments and that thrills me!

Each day has some struggles, but we are definitely moving ahead.  She continues to be well, with a lot of energy, and fairly quick to apologize when she realizes her “pychosporine” has gotten the best of her.  We have been told that she will be on cyclosporine through the year.  I hate that medicine.