We should have known that since they called us Thursday night to say he probably wouldn't get admitted on Friday, that he would then DEFINITELY get admitted on Friday. Also, Richard forgot to bring some stuff... hoodies... gingerale...his snacks from the fridge.
My sister and her friend Kareen came out in the morning to watch the boys. Since it was going to be a long day and unlikely that Richard got admitted, I was all too happy to have the girls watch the boys.
7 am - Kim and Kareen arrive and Richard and I leave.
9am - We're in the LBMT. Vitals, then platelets. Richard had a bit of a snooze (benadryl knocks him out). He wasn't allowed to eat or drink since midnight except for some jello before 5:30am. The platelets only got up to 36, I think with that first bag, so they wanted to give him another.
1:30 or 1:45pm - Richard was taken down to the cath lab for his Hickman Line (he really didn't want to have the HIckman Line put in by angio again on a Friday, no less... Friday the 13th!), so the other bag of platelets would have to wait until after.
3:30pm or a little before - Richard has his Hickman Line in and returns to his LBMT room. He looks good. He went smoothly. He was delighted. He was thirsty. He was hungry.
*A friend of mine, Dawn, who had Leukemia years ago, came to visit us and share in the humorous and not so humorous stories of getting Leukemia. Thanks Dawn! It was so nice to see you! It's been years!!!
4:00pm - They confirmed that he was going to be admitted. Richard and I wanted to get Richard a Wendy's burger before he was stuck eating crappy hospital food. They said we could come up, get admitted, answer some questions, and then go out for dinner. That's just what we did. We walked to Wendy's for dinner. Man, it was hot out for 5:30pm!!! We walked back to the parkade. We pulled up to the very front drop off spots. I helped Richard take up his bags, we kissed good-bye.
7:30pm or so - I started heading home. When I got home, Mom and Ken had already arrived and been visiting for some time and had taken over the last of the babysitting to Kim, Kareen, and Paul could get back to their social lives.
The plan was to take the boys to see Richard today (Saturday) and bring the rest of Richard's stuff, including the chocolate chip banana bread that I made him that I hope he can handle eating when his taste buds go crazy. But, Richard says that Sunday might be better. I think he's right. Richard's reading up on an experimental drug. I imagine the chemo will not start until Monday when his oncologist is there. It will either be the same Daunorubicin and Cytarabine as last time, or it will be the experimental combination of the two in a fat globule? Something like that.
That's the update.
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3 comments:
Crazy about Friday the 13th. Didn't even clue into that. Good call about passing on that.
Some thoughts I had about where you might be able to take the boys for a bit of down time while out visiting are Queens Park off Cambie...there's a duck pond where you can 'feed' the ducks (not supposed to but..). I believe parking is free around the duck pond (at least it used to be, haven't been in a couple years). The other place was Trout Lake off Grandview near Commercial. That's free. Not sure how far you want to drive but those were some ideas I had.
Thinking about you guys lots!
Ryan
Ok, why are you in a courtesy car??
What's the experimental drug?
E.
Experimental Drug -
Last year, he was a part of the "Myletarg" study. He ended up in the control group, so he didn't get any of the drug. Good thing, because a bunch of people were dying from liver failure or something like that.
This year, the experimental drug is the same drugs for chemo as last year (cytarabine and daunorubicin), but instead of being two separate drips, one of them being red, the two are combined into a fat molecule or something like that and the substance is purple. Nice.
Richard's read up on it and read the proposal thingy and I'm sure googled it to death. Not sure what he's decided yet, but he'll need to let the oncologist know for tomorrow when chemo starts.
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