Wednesday was exhausting. It was E’s 3-month SickKids visit for a
lumbar puncture. We also had him booked into the in-hospital dentist
for a checkup, because chemo can do a number on your teeth.
My mom came down the
night before, to help us get J to school in the morning. As usual, we
weren’t up quite as early as planned, but traffic proved to be much
worse than usual. We left the house at about 7:15am, and didn’t
arrive at SickKids until about 9:15am, so 2 hours of traffic. En
route, we received a text message from my mom. She couldn’t find
J’s schoolbag. It turns out that me, in my infinite wisdom, had
grabbed J’s schoolbag from the front door & placed it in the
trunk. The trunk of the car that we were driving which was on the way
to SickKids. So my mom had to scramble & get J to school, come
back to the house, make him a lunch, and then go back to the school
to drop it off in the office so that he’d have food for snack &
lunch. Sorry ma!
This was the start
of maintenance cycle 8, and doing a bit of quick math, E only has 3
more lumbar punctures before reaching end of treatment! Our morning
routine at SickKids was pretty standard: port access, take blood
sample, check height & weight, then off to meet with our
oncologist. Our oncologist currently has a student working with her,
and we saw the student first before the doctor came in. I’m bad
with names, and/or the details were lost in a long busy day, but I
believe her name was Julie, and she was great! I’m planning on
contacting our oncologist to give her some great positive feedback on
her student, because she had an amazing bedside manner, and you could
tell that she was someone who is genuine & cares. I’m sure that
she will have a successful career, and have an amazing bond with her
patients & their families.
E’s counts were
good, and we raised a few issues, such as the cold he’s had for 2
months, and how he’ll (almost daily) tell us that his toe hurts.
Upon checking his ears, they noticed that his left ear was red, and
they noticed some pus. So, in addition to the regular chemo
prescriptions, we got another one for amoxicillin for his ear
infection. Despite the runny nose & cough, it was determined it
was okay to proceed with the lumbar puncture, but he ended up being
last. I’m never certain how they sort things, we could have been
last because we were so late, or we could have been last because of
his cold, and they were worried about him contaminating the room for
the other kids.
They took him in to
the procedure room around 11:45am, and he was done & wheeled out
to the recovery room a couple of minutes before noon. He was in a
little bit of rough shape post-procedure, so they had to give him
oxygen. I was worried, seeing him with the child-sized mask on his
face, but none of the nurses or doctors seemed overly worried. His
cold had made him cough, which was affecting his levels, so he needed
a bit of O2 help. We were speaking with the anesthesiologist, and he
said the result of needing oxygen wasn’t unexpected, so the team
wasn’t surprised, and E wasn’t in any real danger.
E is notorious for
waking early from his anaesthetics. This time proved no different,
and he was up after only 5 minutes in the recovery room. When he was
younger, we’d have to lie with him, or forcibly hold him down,
because the kids need to lie flat for an hour after the procedure to
ensure that the methotrexate distributes evenly in their spinal
fluid. This was probably his best recovery ever. Despite waking
reeeeaaaally early, he was content to lie flat, drink some milk, eat
some Oreos, and watch YouTube.
 |
| Multitasking: recovering, watching YouTube, and eating Oreos |
After recovery, we
picked up our appointment card, and headed to the service level for
E’s dental appointment. It wasn’t scheduled until 3:20pm, and it
was only about 1:15pm, but we checked in early in the hope that
someone might not show up, or they might be able to take us early.
Nope. So we waited. I ran upstairs to Shoppers Drug Mart to pick up
his prescriptions, as well as some Tylenol & Advil for myself,
but that only took about 15 minutes. The oncology team had only
approved a checkup – no work or cleaning today – and when it was
our turn, we were in the room for literally 5 minutes and then we
were on our way.
We had forgotten the
medication calendar, so we went back to the 8th floor to
find the oncology pharmacist so we could pick that up. After that, it
was back to the main floor, then over to the elevator to the parking
garage, and down to P4 to pack up and get going. Of course, because
it was around 4:00pm, we were in rush hour traffic, and it took us
another 2 hours to get home. En route, we had to message my mom to
pick J up from after-school care, because they close at 6:00pm, and
it became pretty apparent that we weren’t going to make it in time.
Tired, and finally
arriving home, there was a nice dinner of roasted veggies and chicken
in the oven. In the process of sitting down for dinner, my wife
noticed that E was feeling warm. She took his temperature, and he
read 38.2°C,
which is over the fever temperature of 37.5°C,
so this meant paging the on-call oncologist. Worst-case scenario,
we’d be going back to the hospital. I was confident, defiant even:
“There’s
no way we’re going to a hospital tonight. They just did his
bloodwork 10 hours ago, and they know he has an ear infection. He
has a fever because of the ear, so we’re staying put, they’ll
just tell us to get him started on the amoxicillin”.
Nope.
The
oncologist called, and I gave her all of the information about the
day: his good counts, the ear infection, the lumbar puncture, etc.
She told me that unfortunately, we’d have to return to the
hospital, because things can change quickly, especially in cancer
patients. The good news though, we’d only have to go as far as our
satellite clinic at Scarborough Centenary, so
we
gave the 7th
floor pediatric unit a ring to let them know we were coming in. We
gobbled up our dinner, packed
an overnight bag just in case we had to stay, arranged for my mom to
stay a 2nd
night to be with J, and then hopped in the car to make the drive.
We
arrived
at the hospital around
7:30pm, and were surprised to see that there was another family in
POGO waiting room, also in with a fever. We had to wait a bit, but
the nurses saw us, accessed E’s port (for the 2nd
time that day), drew blood, and then attached him to a drip on an IV
pole. Have I mentioned how fun it is having a 3 year old attached to
an IV pole? They have no concept of, and don’t care that the line
from that pole is attached to them, and they can rip it out, or knock
over the pole if they aren’t careful. There were a few times he
almost cause a crash, but he had also had a long day, and before
long, he was content to snuggle & watch YouTube. A while later,
we saw the pediatrician, and we answered her questions as best as we
could. It took quite a while for the blood results to come back, and
though they ended up being fine, the pediatrician wanted to add some
antibiotics to his drip before discharging us. By about 11:00pm, I
was feeling sick from being exhausted, so I had a little off-and-on
snooze on the couch. I woke up around 12:30am and the antibiotics
were done.
We helped to hold E while the nurse de-accessed his port and applied
a band-aid. Shortly
after, we
were in the car, and on our way home, around 1:00am. We
crawled into bed around 1:30am. Surprisingly, it took me a little bit
to fall asleep, but I was out before 2:00am. J,
not normally an early riser, had me up the next morning around
5:45am, so I’d managed about 4 hours of sleep. I wasn’t feeling
great, I couldn’t think straight, and I didn’t think I would have
been any help, so I took Thursday as a sick day.
A
completely exhausting day, but that’s our story of visiting 2
hospitals in the span of 24 hours. Hopefully it won’t be repeated
very soon, if ever.
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