Family members never came around on the days George had his fasts as they knew how difficult this was for us. I mean, we were still walking around in hospital socks, the ones with the non slip bottoms. I hadn’t shaved my legs in what felt like ages and I had forgotten about the existence of makeup. My mom would do laundry for us every few days and I did live in leggings and PJs the entire time we were in the hospital. We were showering in the communal bathroom using little toothbrushes we were provided with when we first got admitted. And using hospital towels. We had forgotten what our bed felt like after sleeping on recliners and pull out sofas for so long.

We were first in a shared room at the end of the hall, until we were moved to a private room. That room got flooded, so we were moved to another room closer to the exit door. Rich and I had really good feelings about this room, but then we had to get moved to another room because the sink had to be repaired! We ended up moving again to the room next door, where we stayed until the end of our stay.

We weren’t allowed to eat in the NICU and actually had to step out in order to eat anything. You would think, “Wow, they probably lost weight while they were in there because they were so stressed.” YOU THOUGHT WRONG. We were ordering anything quick, so that we wouldn’t have to spend too much time away from George. We would take turns or just wait until family came around so he wouldn’t have to be on his own. Weeks went by and we hadn’t seen anything other than plastic forks.

Rich and I never left the hospital. There was a BBQ joint across the road the hospital and I think other than going there with my parents, we went to eat at an Italian restaurant right next to it our entire hospital stay. The only time we ACTUALLY took the train to the other end of Manhattan was when we had a gut feeling we were actually going to be discharged. We left to go buy gifts for George’s primary doctors and nurses.