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Writer's pictureKattie Jackson

When Do We Get To Go Home?

The want to go home and the constant battle to get there

As you can imagine, we really want to go home. With all the testing, waiting, surgery, blood draws, diaper changes, and breast feeding, I was ready to be home and in my own environment.

Lots of scares with little time to cope

It Was Always Something


It seemed like everything was keeping us from going home. We had to wait until surgery, which is understandable. And then we were told we just had to wait until he passed stool and then we would be on our way. But that wasn't the case. Apparently, after or before surgery, they found some Blasts in his smear of blood under the microscope. If you have no idea what Blasts are, welcome to the club.


From what I could gather, Blasts are immature cells, that if you have 20% in your blood stream or bone marrow, can lead to AML (Acute Myeloid Leukemia). Those words hurt my core when the doctor from oncology came in to talk to us.


My father passed away from an aggressive form of metastasized lung cancer. I was so hurt that my son could potentially have any form of cancer. The only solution we could get from the doctor was that we will monitor his blood and make sure that his AML doesn't turn into actual Leukemia and if it does he will have to start treatments.


It seemed like there was always something happening keeping us constantly in fear, full of anxiety, and we just wanted to go home.


We were told that his results wouldn't keep him in the hospital and so we were moved to the Anex of the NICU, the rooms that you get transferred to when you are close to going home.




Despite all the news we have gotten, we were told that he only had to gain weight in order to leave. But we soon learned that even that wasn't an easy task for Ollie.


He constantly kept bouncing back and forth between gaining weight and losing it. It got to the point where one day, the nurse came in and said "maybe it'll be tomorrow if he gains weight" only for him to loose a small amount of weight and we had to start all over. His main doctor was wanting two days of consistent weight gain and if he lost weight one day, his time would start over We would have to go back to needing two full days instead of thinking "oh he's gained weight the night before, it'll be fine". It was so devastating to get one good night and then one bad night. I just wanted him to gain weight and I know my stress would impact that so I tried to stay as calm as I could.


But in reality, I was so tired. I just want to go home. I missed my daughter and felt awful for having my recently retired mother in law watch my daughter everyday this far for three weeks. But I knew deep down that she wasn't bitching about watching her because she knew we really needed the help, for which I'm thankful.



Here we are after day one of great weight gain and I was patiently waiting for the call from his doctor. Exactly three weeks old, she finally tells us that he gained weight again over night and that we were cleared to go home.


I was so ecstatic. I finally get to bring my baby boy home! After hard work and lots of tears and stress, I FINALLY get to bring him home! We did everything we needed to to get him to go home, the car seat test and all the trainings we needed to to get here and we are finally here.



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