We had a lovely few days at Halfmoon Bay. We got 2 nice days, though it rained overnight and then was a torrential downpour on Sunday all day. Unfortunately, Friday evening Eric started complaining of a really bad headache. I gave him some of his prescription painkiller, but it didn't seem to help at all and then he threw up. Luckily, he woke up Saturday morning feeling like a million bucks! However, the same thing happened again Saturday night. Very, very unfortunately, neither of us were well prepared and Eric had to change his pjs while i changed the sheets and cleaned the carpet and change my own pants 😠Again, he woke up Sunday morning feeling like a million bucks and we haven't had a repeat since.
We got home from Halfmoon Bay on Sunday night to a power outage. The power was out from 1:15pm to 9pm and we arrived home about 7:20pm. The kids seemed to think it was pretty fun, but I unpacked with a headlamp!
Early Monday morning we headed for clinic. Traffic in the city wasn't too bad, but there was a stalled car in the middle of the highway so it was pretty slow going most of the way along the highway. We arrived right about 9am and his nurse had his port accessed and was leaving the room with the blood by 9:21. It did take an hour to get the results which is longer than usual. Eric's nurse clinician came in the room and asked if we wanted to guess his platelet count. We do this sometimes just to keep hospital visits interesting. I guessed 12, based on absolutely nothing, and Eric said "I'm going to be optimistic...I will guess 13." Since when is 13 optimistic??? Grandma asked what her platelets would be and I said probably around 300ish. Anyhow, I was right, bang on 12! Apparently there is no prize for being so smart :( Eric got his platelet transfusion and we headed out, arriving home about 1:30pm and then we had a couple hours to chill before heading out to swim lessons. No vomit at swim lessons this week!
I wrote the beginning of this update after the Monday appointment, intending to finish it after the Friday appointment on Friday evening or Saturday morning. However, after the Friday appointment I crashed hard: had a big nap and ordered take out for dinner. When I woke up Saturday morning I realized it was the last weekend of Spring Break and we (I) hadn't finished cleaning the kids bedrooms yet, so we (I) spent the weekend doing that. Only now on Monday morning did I realize that I had forgotten to finish my blog as planned.
On Thursday, Eric's nurse clinician reached out to me and asked if we would move our Friday appointment to 8 or 8:30 instead of the 9:30 we had booked since clinic was anticipating being very busy around 9 am with lots of possible transfusions. Eric flat out refused to go into clinic any earlier. We usually try to be accommodating; though I think I might usually agree without asking Eric and this time I asked Eric. To be fair to Eric, an 8am appointment means leaving here at 7am, during Spring Break! When we declined to change our appointment they warned us there may not be a room available for us when we arrived so we might have to wait. Traffic was great and we arrived about 15 min early and then waited maybe another 10 min for a room. It wasn't too bad and our Social Worker showed up with some Miss Vickies Sweet Chili and Sour Cream chips after a conversation they'd had last week. Eric hasn't been eating much at home, but he gobbled up those chips, so maybe I'm just trying to feed him the wrong food at home, you know, breakfast, lunch, dinner... We had thought Eric might need a red blood cell transfusion, but his hemoglobin was exactly the same as last week. His platelets were 19, which is a slight improvement, but he needed to have a transfusion to hold him over to his next appointment scheduled for Wednesday. Everything went smoothly with the transfusion and we headed out early afternoon. When we were in clinic, I counted the transfusions Eric had in March and it was 1 blood transfusion and 7 platelets transfusions. Looking back, he's been averaging 7 platelets transfusions a month for the past 4 months, less in February because it was short, but 8 in January.
Eric finished this cycle of treatment on Tuesday. He wasn't feeling too badly this round, just tired, but he does seem to be feeling better since Tuesday: a bit more energetic, a bit more appetite. His next appointment is on Wednesday for a Bone Marrow Biopsy.
Eric is feeling pretty good, but woke up this morning saying he had a terrible sleep last night and is too tired to go to school today. Months ago I resolved not to fight with him over going to school, so he is staying home today. The city has been doing water main construction on our street (forever) and are finally ready to tie in the new line and our water will be off all day, so that is fun. It will be like when I was a teenager and we had to use a bucket of water to flush the toilet when the power went out, since we were on a well. I was pleased this was happening once the kids were back at school, but I guess Eric will get to enjoy the lack of water today.
When we cleaned Eric's room, I pulled out all his stuffies and told him to sort through them and the ones he wants to keep have to fit in the drawer or on his bed. This picture is the after with the ones he wants to keep. Eric is actually on top of the bed, showing me that they do in fact fit on his bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment