Discharged!

The great hospital pillow heist of 2025 (also Kevin’s last ghost-written post)

Hi Everyone,

I am happy to report that after what ended up being three full weeks in the hospital from the date of her initial surgery, mom was discharged yesterday! She has now taken up residence at the Eros Recovery Suites and, when not exploring the halls on increasingly long recovery walks, is ensconced in the previously referenced, mom-preferred, Most Uncomfortable Rental Recliner Available on the Market® (photo below).

Following my last update, she continued a slow road to recovery from pneumonia with steady and conservative supervision from an excellent team at MD Anderson. The team expanded in the last week to include music therapy and acupuncture, both of which she hopes to continue to receive either at the MD Anderson clinic or via an online music therapy group. As one would expect, mom’s unique enthusiasm for both providers of alternative treatment quickly made her their favorite patient. Her surgery wounds have continued to heal well and there have been no further complications or further updates on the genomic testing of the successfully removed tumor. She was held longer due to a slow recovery from the pneumonia and a niggly low grade fever that persisted far beyond their initial expectations and led to multiple rounds of further antibiotics and even an antifungal medication! They finally cracked the code and let her free yesterday, to great fanfare from the staff of the hospital floor (including the cleaning crew whom she now knows by name). She now has at least a couple weeks of recovery with the Eros crew in Houston before a post-op on 6/23 and clearance to return to the Land of Enchantment.

During the third week of her stay, we developed increasingly complex pillow-piling techniques to ensure her comfort in both bed and chair, which resulted in her development of a (perplexing to the rest of us) great appreciation for the MD Anderson pillows. She ended up having a truly extraordinary number of pillows in the room (debate persists on whether it was 15 or 20). In the closing days of her stay once discharge became imminent, Mary Clare had the clever idea to start pilfering a few at a time each visit (only once mom was assured she could remain “ignorant” of the crime (i.e. showing her to be a true criminal mastermind in maintaining plausible deniability)). Only at discharge did they learn that in fact MD Anderson would appreciate it if they took all of the remaining pillows off the premises as they would otherwise be thrown away! This led to bags upon bags of pillows being lugged out of the hospital and mashed into the Eros Subaru in what I am sure looked to all witnesses as the great pillow heist of 2025. These will all certainly be put to many uses in the coming days, to make that most-puritanical-looking chair more comfortable among others, and I can only hope that an Eros-Malone pillow fight occurs at some point in the coming weeks.

Since returning “home,” Mom has organized her complex medication regimen (which will gradually taper off), tried out her new wedge bed pillow (“fabulous” in her words), started daily prescribed OT/PT exercises, breathed in fresh air with gusto, enjoyed her morning latte, and general return to some semblance of normalcy.

Thank you again to everyone for the support over the past few weeks; prayers, cards, text messages, etc., have all helped buoy her spirits and resolve to get well. I am sure you all join me in looking forward to my mother’s earnest voice returning to this space on the next post.

Love,

Kevin