Overall, John has been continuing his slow upward trajectory of recovery: he was upright for hours with family on Thanksgiving Day; he's been to church with us a couple of times and has begun gentle motions and movements in the bending/lifting/twisting department, reconditioning his body just by puttering around the house after months of debilitating symptoms kept him flat in bed.

After a couple of unhelpful doctor appointments this week, a week of increasingly bad abdominal pain (he white-knuckled through in order to be at the kids' school program Thursday night - the first school-related activity he's been able to attend since last December), he actually ended up in the ER yesterday morning where they transferred him to a bigger hospital 30 minutes away for a blockage that turned out to be a kidney stone, something that would've been nice to have caught at one of said earlier appointments. However, better later than never.

After some IV antibiotics, he had a procedure this morning under general anesthesia, during which they placed a stent to allow said stone to proceed on its life journey. I thought about writing "don't touch his dura" or "be careful moving him back and forth while he's out, because his dura maters" on the hospital room white board, but I'd already left...*helpful* notes on it and the urology ward didn't seem like a place to try much humor. They're rather a literal bunch. Which is probably for the best.

The kids got to visit him yesterday (no valet parking on the weekend = carrying a 24 lb toddler through a parking lot with kids clomping in winter boots down very long hospital corridors). They will have odd Advent memories; two years ago they also visited him in a (soon thereafter to shut down) hospital decked with Christmas decorations, back when his leak symptoms first began: the ding of elevators, cold outside air, sharp smells along endless hospital hallways.

This morning the oldest very much wanted to come with me, so book bag with books and tablet in tow, I let him. He got to practice navigating the labyrinth of hallways, noticing little interior landmarks, using elevator courtesy, discovering the value of taking a dozen donuts to the nurse's station if you have a family member on a ward, finding a seat in a waiting room near an outlet, learning how much time is spent in hospitals just waiting, and so on. He regularly asked John his pain level and corrected which number was circled on the white board. I told him about a time when he was 3 or 4 that I had to take him with me on a hospital visit; those were the days he constantly wore a fedora, his "Papaw hat" named for who gave it to him.

Yesterday as the kids and I were leaving the hospital in the early winter dark, a woman entered the elevator and smiled broadly at them. "Are you ready for Santa?"

The oldest leaned forward, winked very slowly and obviously, and said, "it's okay...WE KNOW." She burst out laughing and we left her chuckling to herself.

John should be discharged tomorrow morning and it will be a relief to have him back home.

It was a strange week: getting a rental while the van was repaired from damage done by hitting a spool of bubble wrap that flew off the back of a truck and into my lane (bubble wrap can do a lot of damage if you're going 50); having a plumber come and cut a hole in the ceiling to try to - believe it or not - to try to find a leak because a couple weeks ago water was quickly dripping from the upstairs bathroom shower through the ceiling below. I took pictures - a puddle on the floor from the water. We stopped using that shower in the duration. Naturally, when the plumber arrived days later, we couldn't get the shower to leak through the ceiling.

(Tell anyone who's had a hard to diagnose spinal csf leak that months after finally getting a blood patch your pipes were leaking, you had evidence of it, but when a plumber arrived he couldn't find the leak, and you'll get a manic laughter response.)

So yes, a calm, quiet week would be quite lovely.