Finally Home

Dear Friends and Family,

As most of you know, we finally brought Lyon Tehanana'ia Foster home this past Thursday. Ariki flew up to Oahu the night before to sign the Discharge paperwork from the hospital. We hardly slept Wednesday night, thinking of all the things we needed to do before leaving Oahu and in disbelief that the day had finally arrived.

Thursday morning we headed over to the hospital. Our new and dear friends, Ted and Sarah, had offered to drive us to the airport. Ted and Sarah had become a daily fixture in my last weeks in the NICU as their daughter Payton was born at only 2.2 lbs and was often placed next to Lyon in every room he moved to. He was making friends already! As we arrived at Lyon's room we could not stop smiling. The day that we had been waiting for had finally come. Think about it this way:
88 days in the hospital
88 days separated from Ariki and my family
Over $120,000 in hospital bills (don't worry its covered)
Over 176 hours spent sitting with Lyon in the hospital
Numerous surgeries, blood transfusions, tubes, wires, machines, nurses, doctors, specialists, sleepless nights and most of all, prayers.

There he was lying in his crib in his little red outfit, ready to go home. We signed the final discharge papers. The nurse took out the last of all his wires connecting him to his monitors and machines. It was so weird to see him completely on his own after so many months attached to machines. We loaded him in his carseat, said our goodbyes and thankyous and started out journey home.

The first day home was a happy blur somewhere between reality and a dream. We were finally back together as a family. Lyon slept peacefully in his bed as we went about arranging the house. Every couple minutes we looked over at him in disbelief-he was here, he was home with us. It seemed as if it were just yesterday he came so quickly and unannounced into this world. It seemed like a really bad dream that we had to go through this whole ordeal. A bad dream that finally ended and we woke up to see Lyon home from the hospital as he should have been as if everything had been normal.

We can't say enough times how forever grateful we are to all our friends and family that have stepped up to help us through this experience. From those who sent money, dinners, did "check up" phone calls, lent us cars, laptops and everything in between. Please know your help and generosity did not go unnoticed and we hope one day to return the love to you. It was really hard to go through this but never once did we question God's plan in all of this. We just knew we needed to trust Him and know that He wouldn't give us more than we could handle. From the critical life-threatening moments in the ER during his birth, to the surgeries he went throught at 1 week old, to his blood infection that caused him to stop breathing many times...there was this peace over us that is really hard to explain but we know where it came from.

We ask that everyone who reads this posting please send your mailing address to:
marielegacy@hotmail.com


Forever Thankful and Always Grateful,
Ariki, Marie and Lyon Foster