Adventures in Cancer-Land

Yesterday morning was highlighted by what will be forever known as The Great Neupogen Chase. What normally happens with the Neupogen is, we give it in the evening when Daddy can hold him securely and I can give the shot. We missed it on Sunday evening, I guess because I had been out and our routine was off...anyhow, we did give it Monday morning and Tuesday morning, in the usual way, but on Wednesday morning, Musical Daddy was back at work and I was by myself.

I have had mixed success administering Neupogen to The Boy when I'm on my own. Usually it involves a careful sneak attack, for lack of a better term. I figured that since he was just relaxing on the bed, I could get in there and give the shot before he had much time to get mad.

What happened instead was that he started to crawl away with the needle still stuck in him. Twice.

So he has this nice little triangle of dots on his left leg. Those will go away soon enough. He usually has a few dots on his leg at a time, and he's been given so many of these shots (yet, somehow, he still loves me, for which I am grateful).

Something that only a cancer parent would say: "You know, with the 5-day chemo coming up, that's an even longer break from the Neupogen!"

Today's visit to the treatment center was an all-day event, as I somewhat suspected. The Boy received blood and platelets. Sometimes his visits where he gets blood are very calm and boring, where he just wants to lie around and let me do the same. Not this time--thank goodness Grandpa came to help. I was feeling rather tired and pregnant by the mid-afternoon.

Adding to the fun was a slight fever of 99.7 axillary, just over the limit of automatic ER visit. I wasn't too too worried, because I knew that his ANC (absolute neutrophil count; number of useful white blood cells) was decent enough so that he probably wouldn't get admitted, but they didn't just go ahead and send us home right away. We reminded them that The Boy had just been playing and scampering around like crazy, which would also account for the elevated heart rate (that, and the 3 or 4 cups of extra fluid that he had pumped into his body), and they said they'd have us sit for a bit...take the temp again, 99.2. Take it again, 99.0. Good deal. Go home.

Someone is ready for bed. We are SO glad that he'll be going to sleep in his own bed instead of in the hospital. It's something that we're thankful for every night it happens, here in cancer-land.