No pressure

So this week has been pretty full, not least because the boys are home for the October holidays. Adam has to have toxicity checks every other day, starting this past Monday. These checks are designed to make sure the levels of chemo drugs don't go too high in his blood, and that his body is able to cope with the doses. They can either be done at the hospital or at home, though having tried one at home we are currently opting for the hospital. Funny how anything becomes an excuse to get out in this house!

Every two days someone checks his blood for white blood cells, neutrophils, haemoglobin and platelets, his urine for all sorts of things but mostly blood in it, his blood pressure (which shows how his kidneys are functioning) and his mouth. This is because methotrexate affects--read kills--the cells of the digestive tract, starting from the mouth all the way down. On Wednesday Adam was starting to show some areas of breakdown in his mouth, and it looked to be getting worse yesterday morning. Today, however, it is amazingly better, and so far he's eating just fine. We attribute this to the salt water rinses we have been doing, highly recommended to anyone else suffering mucositis from chemo. The rest of his numbers are good too, for now--except his blood pressure, curiously. It was high today, and now we have to keep a close eye on it to see if it is high or if it was a random occurrence.

Which brings me to the question of the day: Have you ever tried to get a blood pressure from an autistic child who doesn't really like to be touched? Even better: have you tried to get a urine sample from that same autistic child? Have you tried to do it daily? Both of them daily? Many times?? Well, now you know why I bought a bottle of wine at 10am today.

So that's our fun for the next two months--every day we have to get a blood pressure and a urine sample from Adam, who neither likes to be touched nor pees on command. Hmmm...this may just test my creativity to the limit. On the other hand, I will be putting it on my CV and hope that in the event I actually work again someday it might count for something!

After the morning (and before the wine!) we went to our favourite woodland walk, the one with the "loop-de-loops", and entertained ourselves by running full-pelt along them like a rollercoaster. If you have had the morning like I described two paragraphs above, you would have enjoyed it too! :)