On Friday March 23rd, 2018, we went to our satellite hospital for another push of chemo meds. E's bloodwork was okay that day, so he received both vincristine, and methotrexate. The dose levels remained the same for him, and were not adjusted up or down. He seemed to tolerate this push better than the previous vincristine & methotrexate push; we didn't see any vomiting this time. The only change we noticed this go-round was with sleep. For 10 nights between the chemo push, and his next lumbar puncture, he was extremely restless at bedtime, and would not fall asleep. Every night, I would lie down to help him fall asleep, and he'd flip, flop, squirm, and roll over for at least an hour. I'd lie down with the intent to put him to bed, but in the end, I'd fall asleep with him.
Our next lumbar puncture occurred Monday April 2nd, 2018, which is Easter Monday here in Canada. I was in fact so surprised that the cancer day clinic was open on Easter Monday, that we called our contact nurse at SickKids to confirm that the appointment date was correct.
We had asked my mother to come out the night before, so that she could take care of J, and spend the day with him, since his daycare was closed for Easter Monday. We got away from the house not as early as I had wanted, but since it was a quasi-holiday, traffic was pretty much non-existent, and we were able to make the approximately 45 km drive in about 40 minutes. Much better than the 1.5 - 2 hour trip that we normally have to endure.
Due to Good Friday, Easter Monday at SickKids was busy. We've never seen so many kids waiting for a lumbar puncture before. E's lumbar puncture started around noon, but the procedure only takes maybe 10 minutes. They need to lie flat for an hour after the procedure is complete & E slept for most of it. He woke up with about maybe 10 minutes to go, and he was grumpy. My wife climbed into the recovery bed with him to try and calm him down, and I set to work getting some mild warmed up because at this point he'd been fasting for about 9 hours. He guzzled his milk & happily ate some Goldfish crackers while watching PAW Patrol. We still had a push of both vincristine & methotrexate, but our nurses informed us that they were still waiting for the pharmacy to send them up. I believe the chemo drugs arrived around 2, and everything was infused, flushed, and heparinized about 20 minutes later.
It turns out that a busy long day at SickKids was actually a good thing. We stopped to see our Contact Nurse before leaving to pick up our next appointment card, and she had some great news! The blasts which had been detected in blood from E's previous lumbar puncture had not been detected in this lumbar puncture. We'd been told not to worry, and we were trying to follow that advice, but we could finally stop holding our collective breath. It had been a busy day, and a longer than normal day, but the extra time had allowed us to still be at the hospital when the lab results came back. We could go home with this good news under our belts.
And such good news!
ReplyDelete