Time to go everyone!

Yes, I know that there should be a comma in that title, but it looked awkward and I'm all about appearances.

Today is clearly different.  When Ronnie was in the ICU I would be down in her room at 6 to catch her doctor on his early rounds. Even yesterday, when she was in our current step-down unit, I was down at 6, though the doctor didn't come in until 6:30 or so. But Ronnie had been up and had gotten some sort of wash-up. Today I came down at 6:25 and the room is dark and she's still asleep.

So I guess the point is, they're not doctoring us any more. I'm sure we'll see our doctor  more than once before we go and in a week (later note: we saw him twice and after the second time he just turned and said, "See you in a week."), but for now we go from having a 24/7 group monitoring to just us. At least we won't need to disconnect any wires to move around the way we do now. I'm not doing anything about things I won't miss. That would be everything except what I put in the last post. But I especially won't miss all the wires and stuff hanging off Ronnie, though not with nearly the intensity that she will not miss them.

So now it's just waiting for them to give us our final instructions, at which point the message will self-destruct and we'll be off on our mission.

The idea of going home after such a long time is stranger here than when we've been away on vacation. Some of it's the same. Usually by the end of a long trip we're craving the familiarity and looking forward to not having to eat every meal off a menu. The food aspect of this is definitely attractive, and the supermarket is a similar distance to the ones I've used around here (I've used all 4, Key Food, Bravo, Associated and Gristedes- Bravo is the nicest but my favorite is Associated because they always have salsa music blaring over the PA system, which gives buying yogurt and cereal a festive feel) but now if I go out I leave Ronnie alone instead of in the care of nurses. At some point in the next day or so I will do that, and it's going to feel weird for me and probably even more for her.

Having the dog around will be a challenge too. She's very cute but she's an attention whore, and will not leave us alone. She'll stay with our friend who's been boarding her for a couple of days until we get acclimated.

But it will feel less and less weird as time goes on. And in a few of months, this will be mostly a memory and Ronnie will be feeling better than before we got here. But have no doubt, this is a big reminder of how important it is to appreciate the journey and not focus solely on the destination.