Yesterday was a whirlwind. We woke up at RMH, hoping to get word about starting therapies, assuming we were there for at least another week and a half, hoping for clarity moving forward. By mid-morning, I was calling and leaving messages and trying to get in touch with the scheduler at Shirley Ryan outpatient rehab, and she finally called me back after lunch. She had just heard back from insurance that they are out of network with our insurance, and they should have checked on coverage before we had our evaluation appointment on Monday, but because outpatient therapy is available to us at home (unlike inpatient therapy, which was itself a hard sell for insurance), insurance had been rejecting things and being stupid. So we could probably pay a premium to stay and do it with them, but it wouldn’t start until next week at the earliest, and as I already knew, it would just be three times a week, because that’s all they’re allowed to schedule. We had apparently been staying in Chicago for no reason all week.
Fortunately, we were getting on a bus and in public, so I couldn’t start crying there. As Annie beamed at all the fellow bus passengers, I started to process that we needed to go home, that once we left Ronald McDonald House, we wouldn’t be able to get back in if I changed my mind, that driving back and forth two hours one way for an hour of PT and an hour of OT was not going to be worth it, that Annie had already been 6 days without therapy, and how was I going to check out of Ronald McDonald House with all of our stuff, her walker, the stroller, and all the little bags and totes of school supplies and get us home? I can’t believe I managed to focus enough to get us off at the correct stop.
We’d been on our way down to Millennium Park to meet Annie’s beloved cottage school teacher, Maddi, and her mom Kelsi, who runs our Charlotte Mason hybrid school. They had promised to come visit us in Chicago when they first heard about the surgery and had driven all the way in to do the Art Institute with us (only to find out as we all arrived that it is closed on Wednesdays!). So instead of our planned hang out in Chicago, I shared my realization that we needed to pack up and move home, and Kelsi pointed out that they were going to drive back to South Bend after visiting us, anyway, so why not just bring us home? We headed over to RMH with the usual Chicago adventures (have you really visited Chicago if you haven’t gotten turned around in one or more parking garages?), and Maddi and Kelsi played with Annie while I packed up our room and checked us out. And we drove home in time for dinner!
So I had been praying that the decision to stay or go would be really clear. God answered! And while Maddi had hoped to come visit while we were still inpatient, it was totally God’s timing for them to pick this Wednesday–I can’t even imagine the stress of trying to figure out how else we could have gotten home. I am so frustrated that we could have been home since Friday and started the process of getting PT going again here (even though they couldn’t give us 5 hours a day of therapy until the end of the month, anything would have been better than the nothing we’ve had since leaving inpatient!), but my mom reminded me that being in Chicago allowed me to focus just on Annie and not all the craziness of life back home.
Because chaos is the key word here. Many of my friends remember me joking about this summer and how we were getting our kitchen remodeled and wouldn’t it be the absolute worst timing if they got delayed and started working on our kitchen the exact day I got home from the hospital with Annie? Guess what started happening yesterday afternoon, right before we got home?
Yes, that would be our kitchen, completely gutted today! We have no kitchen sink or oven. God has a great sense of humor.