Most of last Wednesday is a blur. I remember getting up somewhat early, brewing some coffee and visiting Zachary at his crib to view a very comfortable and sleepy child enjoying the last few hours of his good night's sleep. He didn't see it coming (nor did I for that matter) of the amount of activities that were in store for the both of us that day.

Zachary was scheduled to be picked up by the ambulance people at 10am. With this in mind I figured that I could get in all of the packing if I started at around 9:45am. This, of course, is how all men think. Give us a few boxes, some tape and a handful of pillow cases and we can pretty much pack up anything. Zachary's female nurses, on the other hand, had other thoughts in mind. They insisted that I start packing up stuff at 7:15am.

Seven fifteen? Are you kidding me? Even the birds aren't up that early. Well... some of them aren't.

Ask any man and they will confirm that this course of action is overkill. As everyone knows, successful packing requires two initial components: ample caffeine in the bloodstream and about 15 minutes of planning. Anything more require a college degree.  Besides, I wanted to finish my coffee and watch a little CNN before I started to pack things up. After all, it doesn't take much time to gather up a child's things. This would take, at the very most, three pillow cases. The nurses however were insistent about packing Zachary's belongings as soon as possible. So to make things a little easier on all of us I struck up a compromise.

We started packing things up at 7:15am.

Of course my role as the father of the patient carried little weight when it came to parental decision making abilities. For instance:

Nurse: Do you need these 3ml syringes packed for the trip?
Brian: Um, probably not. I think there are plenty of these at my house in Maryland.
Nurse: Well, your wife may need these so we had better pack them up just the same.

I'm not really sure why I was needed in the room in the first place.

Throughout the morning I spoke to various medical vendors, doctors and other various official looking people carrying clipboards.  I answered many questions pertaining to discharge and downed a few donuts in the process. It seems that I may have underestimated what needed to be done and thus didn't have quite the free time to pack that I was hoping for. It's a good thing that I had help. The swiftness and efficiency of the nurses to pack up Zachary's medical supplies, paper records and toys was something that U-Haul could take a few notes on. The best thing that I could do to help was to stand back and stay out of their way.

As the clock struck 10am there were several well packed boxes that were taped and stacked neatly on top of a cart just ready to be wheeled down to the lobby. In the end, discharging Zachary from The Children's Home proved to be a rather easy task for me. It's amazing what a cup of coffee and some planning can do.

To be continued...

Brian and Deanna