Table 3.

Qualitative Themes

Themes	Illustrative Caregiver Responses
Facilitators	“And be together so that’s more positive, and to see him, you know, and when they call him the poster child and he was having a lot of side effects, we were very grateful for that” “This is the bedroom, which is a really very large and lovely space, and on it is—the bed is a quilt we brought from home which was given to my husband when he came home from the Iraqi war. It’s important to him, and it’s an important sign of his courage, which he needs to call upon now as he fights cancer. So it’s really nice to have a nice clean space to put that in. Don’t know if I would have brought it into a hospital room because I also don’t want it to get wrecked”
Challenges	“There were days where I was probably a little sad and that’s just watching him. Like I didn’t cry, but I’m looking at him and I was sad to see him suffering like that because there were a few days where he was very, very weak and sick.” “So I think it’s frustrating when, you know, you think you want to just get up and go to work, but you know you can’t because of the germs and the mask and the this and the that. You know, so I think it’s harder when you’re home because you’re in your home environment. You want to go back to your normal routine, and you can’t do that yet.”
Roles in patient recovery	“I’ve also tried to ensure that I am doing my part in the dishwashing, cleaning, cooking, laundry and other chores that need to be done but not doing it all while my wife is still capable of doing that. This seems to provide her with an opportunity to take control over some aspects of her wellbeing, which she seems to be embracing.” “I was able to cook food in the kitchen that’s here that will be—and freeze it—that will be healthy for my husband to have as we move forward through this, food that was in lines with his special diet he’s supposed to be on.” “there is a little bit more pressure on me in that nobody else is checking on him. So it’s, like, I really had to make sure that, you know, we did the temperature. We did the fluids. We did everything because no one else was checking to make sure that everything was good.”
Assessment of the homebound experience	“Well, just being able to get up in the morning and leave the apartment, go for a nice walk. Just being able to sit on the couch and watch normal television. Being able to sleep in a bed as opposed to one of the pullouts at the hospital. Really just having the independence of being alone and not the constant interruption of the hospital and I guess just the institutional setting of the hospital.” “As I had probably said before, being in the apartment is so much nicer than being in a clinical setting. I mean it just reduces that stress level. You know, we can read a book, read a magazine, watch TV, you know, watch the Yankees play in the series or whatever. It’s been good just to be able to do normal stuff the way we would normally do it at home.”