Eric had a wonderful birthday weekend! He had so much fun with his friends and then later at Boston Pizza with Granny and his aunts and uncles. For his birthday he received 7 Lego sets and had them all completed by Wednesday! On Sunday, he was lucky enough to be invited to Playland with a friend. I have been lobbying for someone else to take him, since he's a thrill seeker and Joel and I don't do rides. Chuck does, but not at the pace of Eric; he needs rests and gingerale between rides. Anyhow, my lobbying worked out beautifully because Eric was able to join a thrill seeking family (his words: they're way better than you) and had a blast. It was perfect timing also, since it was right before he started another round of treatment, so he was also feeling really good. When he got home, Eric had me take this picture and send it to Auntie Becky so she would be jealous of his candy apple.
Monday, Day 1 of 5:
On Monday, Eric started another round of treatment. We've opted to do the same as previous so we can enjoy some more of summer. It doesn't seem to be improving his condition, but it is keeping him stable for now. This means we drive to the hospital 5 days in a row for IV chemo. Our appointments are at noon Monday to Thursday so traffic should be good at least. Monday was an absolute gong show in the clinic. I'm not sure I've ever seen it like that. We did get a room right away, but the clinic was packed and they were short staffed. Some nurses were floated over from inpatient, but clinic is a very different pace so they struggled. We had a clinic nurse but she was trying to give chemo to more than one patient at the same time and was not succeeding. Eric's is only a 10 minute infusion; though he did have to have his port accessed first and was also given an IV anti nauseant. It took 2.5 hours; lots and lots of waiting. Eric's platelets were a little low, but not critical and we decided to do the transfusion Tuesday, since we were back anyhow and hopefully clinic would be less chaotic. On Monday, he also started his oral treatment; day 1 of 28.
Tuesday, Day 2 of 5:
Thankfully clinic was much less chaotic on Tuesday. We were there for 2.5 hours again, but this time Eric received a platelet transfusion in addition to his IV chemo and anti nauseant. Unfortunately on the way home there was a motorcycle accident on Hwy 1. Chuck had run into it and given us a heads up, so I turned on the GPS for the quickest alternate route, but every route was so backed up that it took us well over an hour to get home.
Wednesday, Day 3 of 5:
So far this week we hadn't been lucky, but we figured Wednesday was the day. Eric was already accessed, he'd had platelets the day before, all he needed was his anti-nauseant and his super quick IV chemo and we were out of there. I guess we should have knocked on some wood. It started out great. Clinic wasn't busy and our nurse came into the room right away, with the anti nauseant already mixed up. She called for the chemo to be made. It has a very short expiry, only an hour, so the nurse calls for it to be made up when they are ready to go. I heard the Chemo Tech on the other end say they'd get to it in a couple minutes, so all very positive. But then we sat there, and sat there, and sat there. An hour or so later, our nurse comes in and says "I'm so sorry." Since this particular chemo has such a short expiry date, the chemo tech is supposed to hand it to someone. Unfortunately, they just placed it on the counter in the med room so our nurse didn't know it had arrived. Eventually she did go and check in there because she was surprised it was taking so long, and there was only 5 min left on the expiry, but it takes 10 minutes to infuse so they couldn't use it. We had to wait for it to be remade. We were, again, 2.5 hours.
Thursday, Day 4 of 5:
Ok, this has to be the fast day, right? We had initially thought that if he needed blood, this would be the day to do that transfusion, but his hemoglobin is pretty high still, so we don't need that. We planned platelets for Friday. So just the anti nauseant and super quick chemo, right? RIGHT?!?! When I walked up to the check in desk, I saw there were 4 or 5 families waiting in the hallway for a room and I said uhoh. The check in clerk said yeah, lots of people waiting, but then said oh actually we do have a room for Eric. I don't know how we got so lucky, but he'd been randomly assigned to this special room around the corner from all the others that has specialty equipment to treat blood disorders. (It's really cool; the machine takes out the person's blood, separates the bad stuff, and then puts the good stuff back.) However, the room wasn't being used that day. We had one of my favourite, very experienced, nurses and when I told her what had happened the day before and that we were hoping to actually be fast today, she said "challenge accepted." She had to mix up the anti-nauseant, started it, called for the chemo and it actually arrived quickly. We were out of there in about an hour. It was amazing! We left before his bloodwork results were back so I emailed his team for them later and his Nurse Practitioner said "sorry I missed you." I guess she'd been planning to come see us but we booked it out of there so fast she didn't get a chance! Luckily Eric has been feeling pretty good through this treatment so far since a friend had invited him over Thursday afternoon and he was so excited to go and had so much fun.
Friday, Day 5 of 5:
Last day!!! Eric is excited to have his port de-accessed and be able to scratch under the dressing. Our appointment is at 10am on Friday because we actually have a ferry reservation in the afternoon. We've worked our way back and figure we have max 4 hours at the clinic so we don't miss our ferry. We've got platelets planned and the last dose of the IV chemo, so we should be good. Still, when our nurse walks in the room Eric announces that we are on a schedule. We weren't super fast, but did make it out in 3 hours. And Eric's doctor did make it in for a check up and to quiz me on his meds to make sure I'd packed all of them. He also told the nurse she could run the platelets a little faster. (WHAT?!?! We're there all the time! Why are we not always running faster???)
All in all it was a very long, but uneventful week.
I mentioned a ferry... we are headed to the Sunshine Coast for 10 days. We're spending 3 days at Granny's in Halfmoon Bay and then staying at our very wonderful and generous friends' place on Sakinaw Lake for 7 days. Unfortunately Eric can't go that long without a platelet transfusion, so he and I will be taking an intermission in our vacation. Sechelt does have a nice hospital, but no pediatric department so we aren't able to do the transfusion over here. We decided to take Harbour Air back to Vancouver instead of the ferry because we can land right downtown and then it's just a quick trip to the hospital from there. Also, with Harbour Air, our vacation interlude becomes another adventure. So far Eric is feeling pretty good; we're all hoping it stays that way so he can enjoy our vacation.
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