After 85 days in Lenox Hill, he's getting out!!!!!!

My father has been in Lenox Hill Hospital since August 16th after having a serious heart attack, and he’s been discharged. I go back to the office while my sister and my mother help him get dressed for the trip, via ambulance. My sister eventually comes back to the office while my mother accompanies my dad in the ambulance to the center. Lots of emotion and lots of tears, but he’s on his way and he gets there without incident.

After three months of hospital stay, he was ready to get the hell out of there – they treated him wonderfully and he liked the majority of the people with whom he had contact there, but the hospital isn’t somewhere you want to be for any amount of time. Visiting him wasn’t awful, except for the fact that the majority of his stay was spent in the ICU, which required visitors to wear disposable plastic gowns to avoid the spread of bacteria/germs. For the most part, visiting him was pleasant, but there were a lot of difficult days: he had a breathing tube in his mouth for much of the time he was in ICU, so he couldn’t speak to us, and many of those days he was sedated (some days so much so that he looked catatonic). Those days were anything but pleasant.

And then there were the days when he was no longer on the ventilator in any way, shape or form; the first time I heard his voice after the tube had been in his mouth for a month or more; or the day he got out of bed for the first time.

The process has been ongoing since the summer, and all of our lives have changed since that day – and even the days prior. But going through what we all have, our priorities haven’t changed – we have spent all days since August 16th hoping, praying and looking forward to the day he would be back, healthy and fully recovered. Today is a big day towards that end.