Visiting With Richard During My Emotional Time-of-the-Month

***If you just want to know how Richard is doing, skip down to the part that says "Tears Part 4" :)


Remember last year, when Richard was on the 15th floor on side B he wondered where all the hot nurses were? Well, evidently, they are over here on side A! Woot woot! There's no shortage of eye-candy over here on T15A for Richard. There has been nothing but cute young things coming through here to take care of Richard for past 24 hours. One after the other. He originally had said there was a really cute nurse on the night before. After each cute nurse has been in, I've said, "Is that the one you were talking about?" "Nope." "This one. This has got to be the one." "Nope." I can't imagine what this nurse must look like!




I meant to accompany this post with a picture of drawing that AJ made for Daddy, but I'm at the hospital and I don't have the thingy I need to upload photos from my phone. It's a picture of Richard laying in the hospital bed, hooked up (very accurately) to three lines connecting him to the "machines that give him medicine". He has coloured the whole thing pinky-red. He told me that's the good blood that Daddy is getting from other people. A little disturbing, that rather than just colouring the tubes the blood colour, he coloured all of Richard and the bed. I'll try not to think of what that represents.

Hmmmmm. Maybe I'll post that picture tonight or tomorrow along with the picture that AJ drew of Makenna and himself swimming in Makenna's pool many weeks ago. Did I tell you about that funny picture?

AJ also sent me to visit Daddy along with some pictures of dinosaurs that he drew. His new favourite movie is the Land Before Time. He drew really great pictures of a t-rex (Sharp Tooth), a triceratops (Cera), a Brontosaurus? 'long neck' with a baby in it's tummy (Little Foot), and the character in the movie named "Spike" (I can't remember what kind of dinosaur that is).

A couple nights ago, after bedtime stories, we were talking about Daddy in the hospital. It was right after we had finished reading a lift-the-flap Science book about the human body. There was a page on the circulatory system that had red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets, so it was a perfect teachable moment to talk about Richard's transfusions and such, which I'm guessing, coupled with seeing Richard hooked up to all the machines on the weekend, was where he got his inspiration for his drawing. We talked about how much we missed Daddy while he's in the hospital and how he's going to get really sick before he gets feeling better, and how I'll take him to see Daddy on the weekend again.

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So, my emotional-time-of-month. ... Stay away because anything you might say might make me cry.

Tears Part One

On Tuesday, my car was ready to picked up (thanks again, Ken for helping me deal with that). I had the boys with me. Loaded the car seats back into my car, accidentally forgot my cell phone charger in the courtesy car, loaded Dexter into his seat while AJ loaded himself into his, sat in driver's seat, and began to cry. I was just that happy to get my car back. I was very happy to have been given a courtesy car, as it saved a lot of grief, but you know... you never know how much you love something until it's gone. I LOVE my car so much. I love the room it has in the back. I love how easy it is to load the car seats. I love my radio and CD player. I love my seats. I love the way the gas pedal, break, seat, and steering wheel adjust to my height. I just love it. Evidently, I love enough to cry when I am given it back.

Tears Part Two

Wednesday morning started with the gym. I cannot go to the gym as often as I was now that Richard isn't home to watch the boys for my night visits twice a week, but I can still go during the daycare hours at the gym. The trouble is, the more often I take the boys, the more they treat the daycare like home and get into brotherly fights, especially when they're the only kids in there sometimes. So, I didn't want to take them five days a week, and am instead taking them 3 days a week. Onto my tears now. When I was getting the boys from the daycare, helping put some toys away, and putting on Dexy's hoodie, AJ starts talking to the Wednesday daycare lady, Joan. He starts telling her that Auntie Kim is going to come get him and Dexter and take them overnight so that Mom can go visit Dad in the hospital because he has Leukeeeenia (better than zuchinnia that he liked to call it last year). He starts telling her all about medicine that Daddy gets that makes him really sick, and how he gets blood from other people because his blood is bad, and the word bone marrow even made it's way into the discussion! Poor Joan. She had no idea, and her face! OMGsh. She just looked so stunned that I had to tear up because I felt so badly for her listening to a 4 year old talk about his daddy having Leukemia. We came home, I packed the boys up for Kim, and I packed my own bag to go visit Richard, and fed the boys their lunch while they watch Ice Age 2. Out of the blue, while I'm packing the last of my bag, Dexter looks really distraught and says, "Noooo. Mommy go! Oh no... mommy go!". He looked like he was going to cry. Kim and I look at each with an expression of "awwww", and I tear up a bit. But then, I realized he wasn't talking about me. He was talking about the sad scene in the movie where the mammoth can't find her mom. He points up there at the tv to show me, "Oh.... mommy go. Sad." Those tears were needless. lol. Then Kim headed off with the kids to take them overnight at my parent's place (they're away camping). Thank you SO much Kim. And thank you SO much Paul for helping Kim out. Thank you so much Brock and Jared (who I'm sure, along with Paul, had to play Transformers and assorted other games).

Tears Part Three

As I left the house, I checked the mailbox to see if there was anything inside. There was an anonymous card with a nice little message and some $ to help with gas and parking! Thank you, whoever you are! I'm sure you've paid for my overnight parking with Richard for this visit! Of course, that brought some tears to my eyes.

Tears Part Four

Oh jeepers! So, I got to the hospital to visit Richard. Thank you, Ryan, who had come early in the afternoon to visit and chat with Richard and brought a get well gift! Richard had a really rough day. I think Ryan's visit was the only time that he was feeling pretty good. You know when you are woken suddenly by a 3 am phone call, and your heart just about jumps out of your chest and the adrenalin takes a really long time to calm back down? Richard had woken like that in the morning and had vomitted. He seemed okay for his visit with Ryan. When I arrived, he was doing okay for a little while, was feeling a little nauseated, and then after being startled awake by the phone, he started feeling really sick (don't let that stop you from calling him though, as it won't be stopping me from calling him) . He was feeling cold and wanted his hoodie. He was feeling pain in his chest (not heart) that radiated through to his back and his arms were sore. The nurse that was on was not a favourite of his, nor mine. She seemed a little absent minded, so I was left feeling insecure. He was trying to describe what he was feeling and she would try to repeat back to him to verify what he was saying, but she just didn't 'get it'. I did, but she didn't. Anyhow, he felt that he needed to throw up, so she was just getting the cytotoxic special bucket for him. He was sitting on the side of the bed, and she was checking his drips and stuff. I got kind of close to him, feeling badly, but not sure if I should rub his back or anything (I hate that when I'm nauseated). Anyhow... he suddenly kind of slumps to the side, I thought, from just feeling exhausted, but then.... he just fell back. I was there. I caught him. Otherwise, his head would've gone off the other side of the bed, and his shoulders, I guess. But the bad part was that his eyes were open. I didn't realize that he had passed out. I thought he was choking or had died, right there, while I was holding him. Obviously, I was crying. The nurse hadn't noticed him fall back and I was sitting there calling Richard a little frantically and calling the nurse over to help. That was scary. All I could think of was what if I hadn't been there to catch him? I mean, people pass out, sure. I've passed out a couple times, and one of those was with my eyes open, but still. It was freaky. The nurse that came on later made me feel much more secure about Richard's care and it wasn't just because of her intelligent sounding British accent, but I'm sure that helped! lol. Richard had an ECG and everything was still normal, as were all of his other vitals all still within normal. The nurse gavee him some meds for indigestion. Sounds so trivial, but based on the symptoms with the chest pain, that's what they figured it was and the meds seemed to help a bit. He slept a lot and felt pretty crappy most of the evening. During the night, there was something wrong with one of his drips. The alerting noises for it must've gone off about 7 or 8 times. Meaning 7 or 8 times during the night, nurses came in. In the morning, Richard was sick again. He hadn't touched his dinner the night before, and was able to only have a little bit of muffin this morning. He's getting platelets today, so right now he's in his Benadryl slumber. He's apologized over and over for being such a bummer. lol. What a guy. Like I was expecting some sort of party or make-out session when I got here. I thought I'd take the time right now to update the blog. Oh ya, he had an x-ray today too, and he's getting some dental work done today. I can't imagine he'll be feeling well enough to have to keep his mouth open for that long, but we'll see I guess.
***later in the day Dr. Neville arrived. Man oh man, I like him a lot. He seems to not only love his research and trying to cure Leukemia, but he genuinely seems to care about Richard.

Tears Part Five

Well, I haven't been frequenting Starbucks through the last 3 or 4 weeks. My students (thanks kiddos) had outfitted me with enough Starbucks gift cards to get me through July (I will admit, almost daily). Richard would say, "Why not space them out so you have it all the way through the summer?" He knew that once it ran out, there was no way I could justify topping up my card while having the summer off. But I said, "I'd rather enjoy it every day until it runs out, and then just make the change and start making my coffees at home." That's just what I've done. I have to say I've mastered quite a delicious mocha since my discovery of cocoa powder. It's like sugar-free magic! One of the ladies who works at the gym, Terri, HATES Starbucks (I can't believe such a person exists aside from Richard), and she had passed on a $10 gift card to me a couple weeks ago. So, aside from those 3 drinks and a frappe that Jen picked up for me (thanks Jen), I've been living on homemade coffee! YAY me. I'm quite proud, I have to say. The only bad thing about my stainless steel coffee maker and it's carafe is that it's so aroma proof. I love to set the timer on a coffee maker and have the delicious smell of coffee wake me in the morning, but with this coffee maker, you cannot smell anything! Hrmpf.
What the heck was my point to this drivel? What the heck! Oh ya... the tears. That was just the background info that the story required so you could understand my feelings. This morning, around 10am, I couldn't take it anymore. I hadn't had a coffee yet and the Starbucks is just across the street. So I did it! I went and got a coffee. You guessed, it... the smell, the taste, the music in Starbucks, I welled up with tears as I walked away taking those first sips.

Whew. Hopefully, I can get control of my emotions over the next two days.

Just watching Richard sleep now. mmmmmm.