Life: Hard Mode
Tyler was discharged from rehab yesterday, and damn, it feels good to be home.
I drove up to Vallejo Kaiser one last time, picked up some dozen or so medications, and by 10:45 a.m., we were outta there! Special shout out to my mom who drove up from L.A. on Wednesdayto let us use her car. If we’d used our Highlander, Tyler would have had to tackle a daunting 9-inch transfer from chair to passenger seat. My mom’s Mazda 3 was a much friendlier 1-inch downhill transfer. Not exactly easy (bucket seats are great for small drivers, less so for the Talls), but we made it work.
The drive home was beautiful, and one of those weird limbo moments where things feel normal but you know everything is different. We listened to a podcast, admired the green Martinez hills, and threw shade at bad drivers. Just a regular car ride. And yet, not.
The first 24 hours were exhausting (hence our radio silence). Coming home was low key—Tyler took a tour of his new setup, settling in before the kids got home. When I picked them up, we had a warm and happy homecoming. We had dinner together for the first time in over two months. We don’t always eat together—schedules, homework, moods—but this one was different. It was really great.
Dad is home.
Life is back to normal.
Except, it isn’t.
The evening was harder than expected. The bed wasn’t stable enough for the board transfers we’d practiced. The sling was too small, and Tyler nearly slid out. The hospital bed was shifty, and thanks to a misjudgment on my part, the memory foam top made board transfers practically impossible. And because we were both wrecked from the day, everything felt so, so hard.
For all of its sterile, institutional charm, the hospital had one thing we suddenly missed: infrastructure. At home, there’s no army of nurses, no perfectly adjusted equipment. Just me, some Durable Medical Equipment™, and a whole lot of trial and error. What used to be a relatively quick nighttime routine stretched for hours. By the time I collapsed into bed, I was beyond exhausted.
But despite Tyler’s frustration, even then, he was the one who said it first:
"It’s never going to be harder than this."
Editor's note: Tyler was 100% right. In the 8 hours since I started writing this post, I am please to report that today was SO much easier. I'll explain more tomorrow 😄