Coming Home On Hospice

After we got off the phone I told Daniel that I was going to start going to the hospital every day until Lexi died. He was concerned about that decision because I was incredibly fragile and he worried about me being alone since he had to go back to work the next day. He had grieved for Lexi and felt unable to go through it all over again. In the end though he agreed to go with me Sunday on the way home from the beach because he loved me. He still had the mindset that Lexi was already gone.

We got to the hospital 7 days after saying goodbye to Lexi for the first time. We were brought to our daughter and neither of us could believe our eyes. She was awake with no tubes attached to her. She looked like a regular healthy baby, just a little thinner than the last time we had seen her. They had me feed her a bottle where the nipple was cut to allow easy milk flow. She swallowed a couple times/choked but didn't really eat.

We heard her cry for the first time. We learned that the nurses had very different opinions of Lexi than the doctors and they were the first people to suggest that the doctors might not know everything there is to know about life and death. We were still being told that Lexi would not survive by every doctor we spoke too. We didn't understand what was happening but we knew we had to bring her home for whatever time she had left.

The next morning Shana and Karen went with me to pick Lexi up from the hospital. An orderly helped us carry her out to the car. I remember being flustered and forgetting that the car seat was supposed to be facing backwards. The orderly said a cheery, "Congratulations!" not knowing our story. We then drove straight to a pharmacy where we picked up a prescription for morphine which is the hospice drug for absolutely everything. 

Nurse Linda met us at the apartment that afternoon. She was a grandmotherly comforting lady and I immediately liked her. I asked a question, bringing the new seed of hope in my heart to voice. "Have you ever had a baby survive and come off of hospice?" With gentleness and certainty she said, "No."