77) The One Where I Amost Ran Over A Man Who Was Being Chased By The Toronto Police

Yes, the title of this post is a nod to the sitcom Friends.

We were driving southbound on Nielson Road on our way to our satellite clinic for E's bloodwork. A flash of movement from the left hand side of my vision made me quickly step on the brakes. There's a plaza on the northeast corner of Nielson/Ellesmere that contains a few fast food outlets, a supermarket, and a dollar store. A man dashed out of the parking lot and ran onto Neilson Road into traffic. He's lucky that I saw him out of the corner of my eye, otherwise I probably would have hit him with the car. Right behind him, in pursuit, was an officer from the Toronto Police. Traffic came to a stop, the sketchy man ran to the other side of the road, then doubled back, running in between cars behind us. My initial thoughts were about whether I could help. Should I move the car to try and block this man? Should I get out, and try to help the officer? Once he was behind us, I quickly came to my senses. I didn't know what was going on. This man could be dangerous - he could have a knife, or a gun. Best to get out of there. The light Nielson/Ellesmere light was still green for me, so I went through the intersection, and turned into the hospital parking lot.

With the excitement for the morning over, it was time to get down to business, and get E's appointment underway. The appointment itself wasn't overly exciting. It was just bloodwork; no chemo that day, so his port didn't even need to be accessed. A quick checkup from our wonderful nurse-practitioner, and then a finger poke to get some blood by our equally wonderful RN.

Later in the day, we received a call from the satellite clinic to report that E's counts were up yet again. Particularly his white blood cells, and neutrophils. He was in the middle of fighting a cold, so that would partly explain the higher levels, but our nurse-practitioner said that SickKids would be calling with instructions about bumping up his dose of chemo again. A little bit later, the phone rang, and it was our contact-nurse from SickKids. She said that E's oncologist had looked at his results, and his weekly dose of methotrexate would be bumped up from 4 pills to 5 pills.

So that's it, that's where we are right now. Just trying to work out the right dose of chemo to keep E's levels from going too high, while also not overdosing him to the point of him being neutropenic.