Last night, I wrote that August had been the first calendar month
where I hadn’t written a post. I was wrong. Previously, in June, I
had gone an entire month without posting something. I had been
writing in June, but what I had written is unfinished, and sits in my
drafts. I’ll try to finish it and post it sometime. It’s not
really timely anymore, but I’ll probably finish it for posterity.
On Wednesday August
28th, we travelled to SickKids for E’s 3-month lumbar
puncture. I continue to sleep rather poorly, which makes getting up
in the morning extra difficult. As usual, we weren’t up as early as
we had liked to be, so we were on the road later than I had wanted.
Being the last week of August, and the week before Labour Day, the
traffic wasn’t too busy. We left at maybe 7:45, took the 401 &
the DVP, and made it to SickKids by about 8:45. We made a beeline for
the parking level P4 (the lowest, and least busy parking level), and
we were up to the 8th floor a bit before 9.
We signed in at the
desk, and were taken immediately to the intake room, where E had his
weight & height measured, as well as his blood pressure taken. We
answered the usual barrage of questions about when he last ate, if he
has a fever, his last bowel movement, and if he has a cough, etc.
After that we were sent to the recovery room, where E had his port
accessed. He was distracted by Rusty Rivets on Treehouse, and he was
really good about it this time. Lately, port accesses have involved
me putting in something similar to a wrestling immobilizer hold while
my wife tries to distract him, and a nurse tries to access him. Like
I had said, he was really good about it, they got some blood out of
his port to send to the lab, and we were then directed to visit the
orange pod to see the oncology team. We were put in a room, and while
we didn’t have to wait too long, we had to keep E distracted. He
was quite amused by the sink that turns on with hot and cold foot
pedals. There also happened to be a doctor’s reflex hammer in the
room, and he got a kick out of tapping me on the knee with it. An
oncologist we’d never spoken with before came in the room to do a
quick exam on E, and to ask us about any questions or concerns. After
that, we shuffled back to the waiting room until it was our turn for
the lumbar puncture.
If you know E, you
know he rarely sits still for long. It’s a children’s hospital,
so the waiting room is full of toys. He played with some toys for all
of about 5, maybe 10 minutes, but then the urge to run away &
explore proved too much, and he was off. My wife and I take turns
watching & following him around when he does this. One of us
needs to stay with him, and one of us needs to stay in the waiting
room to listen to see if we’re called. My wife followed him first &
I stayed put, and when he eventually wandered back to the room we
switched jobs. E was called for his lumbar puncture procedure around
11:20. We did our usual routine of me carrying him into the room with
my wife following. Normally, he wants nothing to do with it; he
squirms, kicks, and thrashes to try and get out of my arms while the
anesthesiologist does his or her job of dosing him with the
medication that puts him under. This time however, he was calm, and
just snuggled me while the anesthesiologist connected to his port to
deliver the drug. In 10 – 15 seconds he was out, and I placed him
down on the gurney where the procedure takes place. My wife & I
left to go outside to sit on the bench, and poof, in what seemed like
no time at all, the door opened & the wheeled sleeping E out of
the procedure room, flashing smiles & thumbs up to let us know
that everything went okay.
While he was
sleeping in the recovery room, my wife and I alternated running to
the ground floor to grab ourselves some food. E usually wakes up
screaming & trying to get up after 20 minutes, while we have to
try and calm him and keep him laying flat for the remainder of the
hour so that the vincristine that was injected into the spinal fluid
can disperse evenly and do its job. This time, E ended up sleeping
for about 40 minutes, and woke up in a good mood. Because he had to
fast for the procedure, he was hungry and was eager for the milk and
cookies we had brought for him. In 2 years of lumbar punctures, this
was the first time that he had woken up in a relaxed state. It was
such a relief to see him that way, and to not have him inconsolably
upset.
Before we left, we
filled our prescriptions for more dexamethasone (steroid), 6MP, and
methotrexate. Little James, whom I had written about last night was
in the hospital that day with his mom. We made contact with her, and
were able to bring up a bagel so she could have a bit of food and not
have to leave her son’s side. We spoke to her in the hallway for a
couple of minutes before we were on our way to go home. Seeing the
little guy and his mom stirred a number of emotions in me. It was
difficult to see how quickly his condition had deteriorated, when
just 2.5 weeks earlier he had been finishing his baseball season, and
going to Camp Ooch. I’m neither embarrassed, nor too “manly” to
admit that I cried during a good chunk of the drive from SickKids to
our house.
We arrived home to
find my mother, who had come down to help get J off to summer
daycare, weeding our garden. She chopped a bunch of peppers, onions,
& mushrooms, and we had a really nice dinner of fajitas. I
dropped her off at the GO Train, came home, and then fell asleep with
J after having read him a bedtime story. The end to a long, tiring,
emotional day.
No comments:
Post a Comment