way of life – until she’s safe and cured. We believe she is in remission but won’t know until she has a bone marrow biopsy. The doctors are waiting a few weeks but her blood counts are strong enough to be predictive in some way.
As the quote from our WNST.net partner (on behalf of the Living Classrooms Foundation – and I bet you didn’t know that 5% of all of our profits go directly to them through the generosity of Coach) Brian Billick said in the opening quote: we’re not really in charge here.
We just go with the flow.
We’re responding to the conditions as they exist – and they’re always changing.
One minute she’s eating a stirfry and some cheesecake, the next she’s on the floor with a bucket and back in the hospital getting attached to a tree and a bed.
Things have happened. We have adjusted. The doctors also adjusted. Every adjustment took some time and some nuance to manage.
And after a long stay at “The Hotel” at Broadway and Orleans, she is home for now and enjoying life with some sense of normalcy with our beloved cat, Kitty.
I read that when U2 comes back from a long roadtrip, Bono’s wife makes him spend two weeks at a hotel in the neighborhood where they live – so he can decompress and get used to “normal life.”
For Jenn, this is the second time we’ve been through this and we know the drill. She’s tired, weak, frail but full of lots of energy in her head that sometimes her body can’t endure just yet. She’s been gone from our home since Oct. 4th – the day the baseball season ended.
And make no mistake about it: everything about this second trip has been more difficult.
Then there are the emotions and the scars from what was simply a dreadful, awful time in our lives that will never come back. Those endless nights of nausea, vomiting, dread, pain and fear that it would never end are over – for now.
And, although I was sober and awake to witness it all, Jenn (thankfully) has very little recollection of the unending stream of illness that she survived.
As badly as she wanted to leave the hospital and come home, on the final morning there she was very emotional about leaving these very special people.
These nurses and doctors cared for her, 12 hours at a time, around the clock, knowing every medicine, every update, every awful symptom and illness for 47 days. Many did this with such personal care and concern, and a genuine empathy that leaves me speechless.
These are “elite” people.
And when I carted her into the lobby of the building at 2:20 a.m. on Sunday and she was carrying a blue bucket and wearing a white robe that would make Creed feel tough, they grabbed her at the door and got fluids into her and helped her from going down a dangerous path with her blood sugar.
We are indebted. These nurses and doctors are the best in the world.
But my memory is long of all of the sights, sounds and smells of “The Hotel.”
The sounds of the endless audiotape in the garage telling me how to pay.
The public restroom on the fifth floor that I have used for 105 days and nights.
The smell of the whole place. The gobs of Purell. The buckets full of vomit and bile and the stench of cancer.
The blood, the bags of fluids and the wretched sound of all-night beeping of fluid lines that were occluded and the little red light. The handset to call for nurses and to work the Gawd-awful cable television that didn’t have MLB playoff games, Caps games or the Food Network to entertain us at various times.
Watching my best friend go from healthy to very sick, very quickly and almost seamlessly was wretched. The hours when I really became concerned about her direction last Tuesday and Wednesday when she hadn’t eaten a bite of anything in more than a week and the doctors and nurses were clearly getting concerned.
It’s all gone – for now.
She’s doing far better than I would’ve believed two weeks ago but she’s so tough, so resilient, so strong.
But now we await to feel the burn – and I don’t mean Bernie Sanders.
Honestly, we haven’t communicated with each other much during her illness. She was just very, very sick for long stretches of time. So, now we’re going to reconnect during the holidays and appreciate where we are and the high hopes that we have for our future.
I’m going to be doing kick ass radio and sports media here at WNST.net. Jenn and I might even sit down and have some fun on the radio this week and talk about the Caps or the Ravens or whatever makes us smile.
It’s nice to have her home. It’s nice that she’s alive. It’s nice that she’s improving. It’s nice that y’all care enough to be kind to us when the going got tough.
We’re awaiting her rash and hoping for the best when that happens.
We’re steadfast in our belief that she will endure, survive and thrive.
We’re keeping the faith. Hope you are, too!
And we’ll be doing some swabbings with some Ravens players in the coming weeks and hope that you join us and support us.
Thanks for the #JennStrong2 love.
Happy holidays!
