March 26th - Week 45

Well this week was Spring Break for Nathan and Lily.  Lily was excited to come to the clinic with us and Nathan was going to play at a friend's house for the morning and then go see The Hobbit with Bryson.  With it being a week off from school, I had a hard time finding a place for Benson to go.  Many people were either out of town, or had their own bunch of kiddos home and I didn't want to ask, so I ended up taking Benson with me, too.

I was feeling good about how quickly I got everything and everyone together and on the road.  Just as we got on the freeway, Kayla said, "How come we didn't do sleepy cream?"  Whoops!  Not again!  I was not going to add an extra hour to our clinic visit that day, so I called Bryson and asked him to meet us part way and bring the sleepy cream, tape, and Glad Press and Seal.  So, we got off the next exit and went back.  We met Bryson in a parking lot and got Kayla's sleepy cream (numbing cream) on her port.  And then we were back on the road. :)

We got to the clinic, checked in and accessed, and met with Marnie.  Lily was happy to stay and do a project with Miss Jenn through all of that, but Benson wanted to stick with us.  I am glad that it is a Pediatric clinic. . . everyone is always very accommodating when you have extra kiddos hanging around.

Kayla's platelets were great, over 400, and her neutrophils were at 750 - kind of low, but still high enough to get chemo.  They were giving her 75% of her normal dose that day and the next week because of her counts being so low before.  When she starts the next cycle, they will bump it back up to the normal dose.

Other than that, Kayla looks great and is doing great.

So, we all headed back to the chemo suite (which is like half the size because of construction. . . I was hoping for a slow day in there).  We did get our usual spot on the bed, so that was nice to have our own little corner.  With all four kids, it was going to be a long day.   We started off watching Toy Story, since I knew that would keep Benson occupied and happy.  And it did.

Miss Jenn did a great job of keeping the kids happy, and that was so helpful.  She got out a big Hexbug set for Benson to play with and some preschool coloring for the girls to play school with.  We also played Sequence Junior, Headbandz, and more Hexbugs.  The kids all ate lunch on the bed, Lily and Benson cleaned up any of Kayla's leftovers. Sadie did pretty good the whole time, too.  It ended being a really long day, though, so by the end, everyone was cranky and ready to go.  We had left at 8:30AM and it was about 4:30PM when we got home.  I was very grateful to have dinner delivered to me that night!