Homecoming #4

Eli recovered well enough from surgery that she was discharged early this afternoon. We're all exhausted but very grateful to have Lia and Eli home so soon. We all hope and pray that this time they're home for good, though we realize that sufficient to each day is the evil thereof--we've been disappointed often enough not to expect or hope too much. I may go back to school tomorrow, but we'll have to see how Eli is doing. This would be a fortuitous return time, for tomorrow none other than Mr. Justice Antonin Scalia will descend upon the Yale community, lecturing to the public Thursday evening and to the law school Friday morning. Dean Koh, who usually sends out encomiastic emails praising upcoming speakers to the empyrean, said of Justice Scalia that, in effect, "He's a fascinating speaker; this should be interesting."

A couple of funny stories: Last night I was holding Eli in my lap watching election returns on CNN (we milk access to hospital TVs for all its worth). One of the monitors which hospital personnel so officiously attach and so scrupulously ignore started beeping loudly. Having my hands full I called out, "Lia, could you come turn this off." Lia trotted dutifully over, picked up the TV remote, turned off the television, and trotted happily back while the beeping proceeded apace. "You're kidding right?" I asked her. "About what?" she innocently responded. "About turning off the TV when I wanted you to turn off this incessant beeping." In the best tradition of the Suttner women, she had no idea.
As Eli's discharge papers were going through, an officious nurse (and they're all officious) came bouncing in to check her vitals. Eli was asleep and about to go home but that wasn't to stop this nurse because, as every good student nurse knows, "Vitals are vital" (the library of one major nursing school reportedly bears the granitic inscription, "Vitalim vitalis est."). Eli woke up when her blood pressure was taken, of course, but we all could go home happy in the knowledge that Eli's BP was no worse than it had been an hour before when an earlier nap came to an untimely end. Home sweet home, indeed.