15 Weeks // A Fond Farewell

Monday was a big, big day.

It began and ended with a multitude of farewells. Doctors, nurses and staff of all kinds came by JoAnne's room to bid adieu (or adeu, in this case!). She gifted them all a beautifully wrapped, imported soaps and insisted on kissing them on both cheeks. One janitor gave her a portrait he'd sketched of her, two doctors got a bit misty-eyed and three nurses told her the entire TRACU staff would always call rm. 3501 "JoAnne's Room".  :)

Family and friends stopped by to spoil her rotten one final time! Nick made her bbq ribs on Saturday night, Susan made sure a few pounds of See's Candy were tucked into her suitcase, Karin & Ed brought her one final Chilean salad and soft serve ice-cream, and Katie Haugen baked the most delicious cookies for her flight (they didn't make it out of the hospital room, iykwim). Carol and MaryAlice visited, too, and Justin and Alex made an appearance (and rather than bringing anything, took a bunch of her non-travel-able crap home).  :)

We met Marta! JoAnne's nurse escort arrived Sunday and came by on Monday. She worked with JoAnne and the physical therapist, Dana, on lifting and pivoting JoAnne, helping her to scooch from chair to chair on a transfer board, and learned about her wounds and ostomy/catheter care. Marta is from Madrid and did not mess around. We were extremely impressed by her professionalism, sweetness and attention to detail. It was a pretty hilarious process at first; JoAnne kept forgetting which to speak English to and which to speak Spanish to. It was eventually sorted out and training was an immense success!

Later in the evening we finished packing, cleaned out her room, put her brand new travel outfit on (matching, of course), and then settled down with a Thai food dinner. Kelty got her wedding photos back this last week, so she and JoAnne had some time to look at them all together, which meant a lot, seeing as though JoAnne missed the day when she took ill. It's been such an incredible journey since that terrible Wednesday, August 20th, only a few days before Kelty & Justin's wedding.  It's quite impossible to explain how grateful we feel for this journey, this outcome, and all of you who have helped and loved so very much for so very long. Price put it so well tonight when he quoted a Zen saying:

Once you have realized the Truth, a thousand words are not enough, yet even a single word is too much.

See below for some photos of the day, taken lovingly by Kelty. The last photo takes place in the ambulance driveway at 2am where we said goodbye as they loaded JoAnne in and closed the doors. She gave us a double thumbs up and yelled in her typically loud, confident Stier fashion "I LOVE YOU!"... but we were so choked up with emotion that we could only grin like fools, teary and madly waving to her as the doors closed, the van started up and they pulled away into the rain. Blubbering and hugging one another, we turned to our left to head back inside and were met with a reflective window. We only then realized that this window had been the opposite view that we'd had from JoAnne's first ICU hospital room! We had made it to the other side. 

We got word this morning that JoAnne made it safely and soundly to Barcelona. We'll send an email out with her hospital contact info once we know it, but for now, feel free to email her gmail account, which she'll hopefully be checking more frequently: JoAnneStier@gmail.com

We reread this blog today, looking back on all that's happened the last 105 days. 15 weeks. Almost 4 months. I remember writing the second day that we're all in this together. We were then, and we still are.  :)

Much love,

Team JoJo