At Last I See the Light: April 2nd

We are really counting down the weeks now! It's kind of crazy! This past Tuesday, Lily and Nathan were back in school and Benson went to a friend's house, so it was just the usual crew at the clinic, Kayla, Sadie and me. And I remembered to put sleepy cream on Kayla's port before we left. :) We had to leave by 8:15AM, and I did not get things packed the night before, so the morning went by pretty quickly, but we got there on time.

I was looking forward to this visit, because we were going to see Dr. Hansen. I had asked Dana, the scheduling person, a few weeks ago if we could see him sometime, so she scheduled us a few weeks in advance to be able to meet with him.

While we were meeting with Dr. Hansen, I told him that the new anti-nausea medication had made my life 100 times easier. :) He was happy about that. I also asked him about Kayla starting Kindergarten next fall. She should finish her chemo sometime in July (unless we have more delays. . . ), so I wondered if that would affect school. He told me that her immune system will not be back to normal until December or January. But, he does believe that starting school is a good risk that he encourages taking. It would be nice if she had a good two months of no chemo before school starts, but she is in a big family with germs flying around everywhere anyway, so she should be okay. I was glad to hear that. Once her 60 weeks are up, her blood will only be recovering, so each week it will be getting higher without being knocked down again with more chemo.

The rest of the day actually felt like it went quickly. The nurse started Kayla's fluids as soon as she was accessed, so that always saves us a lot of time. Plus with it being the 4th week of a cycle, she only gets the carboplatin. The vincristine only takes about 15 minutes anyway, but that is still 15 minutes saved!

We watched Mulan (Kayla's first time), ate lunch outside on the patio (love the nice weather!) and played some games. Kayla and I played Hide and Seek. She wanted to hide first, so I counted. It's pretty difficult to find a good spot to hide, 1) because it is a very small patio and 2) Kayla has a bright blue and yellow IV pole that she is connected to the whole time. But, she found a good spot to hide. In fact, she thought it was so good, that each time she hid, she went to that same spot. :) She kept telling me how good it was, so she'd just keep hiding there. Funny girl. :)

Kayla also played basketball with Miss Jenn and Miss Gabby (a new nurse). A quick funny story: the ball that came with that hoop needed to be blown up, but Jenn didn't have a needle for the pump. Being at a medical clinic, Jessica (another child life person) told us that they just use a large blundt needle and the oxygen that comes out of the wall. So, Miss Penny called someone to bring her some needles and they worked very hard on getting that ball pumped up (which we didn't end up using). We know they love us there. :)

And before we knew it, her pump was beeping, saying she was done. Yay! Another week down!

Miss Sadie and her multiple arm rolls: