The Adoration of the Christ Child

The Adoration of the Christ Child
See if you can spot why I like this image

Everything in its Right Place

A blog about disability, life, parenting, and learning what it means to live well in this world.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Vertigo

Whew, don't even know where to start about yesterday, it was such a topsy turvy day...14 hours spent in the hospital, split fairly evenly between Brian and I and our necks, which we have decided take the brunt of the hours spent laying around with Adam. The long and short of it...

Adam was supposed to be in the hospital at 8am, "fasted" (meaning having had nothing to eat for at least 6 hours) and ready for his bone marrow aspiration and lumbar puncture, the grand start to the new block of chemo. Unfortunately for him, and scarily for us, the incision site where his port was inserted had started to open up. I'll spare you the gory details, but it was obvious they could not do the procedure, not straight away at least. It took four hours of waiting for a surgeon to be free, and Adam eventually went to theatre at noon where he had the two "normal" procedures and his wound fixed. The surgeon stitched it up, taped it up, and put a clear plastic dressing over the whole thing. Said to leave it alone for 7 days...sorry, doctor, did you say 70 days?? I'm not touching that thing with a ten foot pole, only hoping and praying that this time it will heal.

At any rate, they were able to use the port for his chemo, another "big gun"--you know it's a nasty drug when it takes 30 minutes to give the drug and four hours on either side for the fluid flush to make sure it doesn't stay in Adam's bladder and cause damage!! During this time Adam ate, played with his brother and sister, visited with friends, ate some more, watched TV, and did some good talking. He was looking brighter than he had in weeks, some small consolation for the morning's scare.

Also during the afternoon came a chat with his doctor and the good news: Adam is now in remission!! The bone marrow sample in the morning showed less than 1% of leukaemia cells in Adam's blood, a very good sign albeit a week late. We were pleased, and glad to hear that the plan at the moment is to carry on with the next two rounds of chemo as planned. He is to have a blood transfusion today to help boost his red blood cell count, but otherwise the rest of the week should be "normal", whatever that means!! It's astonishing how fast a "bad" day can turn "good", and vice versa. Guess I better sit back down before the dizziness hits again.

No comments: