Blankie is his name!

Today was my last day of work for a LONG time. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, by the time I return to work, I'll be 30 years old with two children.

I'll miss the job. I'll miss the interactions. I'll miss the excitement of the kids' performances and, even more so, the little achievements that happen from one lesson to the next. Filling up the sticker charts and such.

But I will not miss the constant anxiety of figuring out how to take care of The Boy while still trying to keep my job. The fact that this whole treatment process is SO unpredictable makes it impossible to do any sort of work. Furthermore, I already ran out of sick days.

Anyhow, I am snuggled up on the chair with the blanket that my mother made. It's special because it is very similar to one that she made for my brother. Special because she made it while she was being treated for cancer. And, of course, special because it's from her. Mom's the best.

The line "blankie is his name" comes from The Boy's favorite film, Goodnight Moon. I wrote an entire review on it, so I won't recount the entire film even though I could probably recite it from memory at this point.

I am relieved, like I can't even tell you, that The Boy has had such a pleasant and uneventful chemo stay. Last night was the only issue, really, in which he had swelling around his port and it had to be de-accessed and eventually re-accessed. They had to use the wrong size needle, and they had to put gauze around the access point. Normally, we tell anyone who tries that that The Boy's oncology team doesn't allow it, because it's just a breeding ground for infection. This time, they are using the gauze and changing the dressing frequently. Problem there is that the dressing itself is a sticky plastic thing called Tegaderm, which is a major pain when removing. Like a band-aid but different.

I also got to see, firsthand, the cotton ball trick. The Boy has to have cotton balls in his diapers so that they can measure urine quality, to be sure that he isn't getting any infections or any blood in there. Fun, right? Well, he has figured out exactly where they go. Take off the old diaper, get the new one ready, and put the cotton balls in his hands. The cotton balls go right where they need to go. What I'm wondering is, when they do the project in preschool where they make a snowman on construction paper, out of cotton balls, how is that going to go for him? In today's hyper-sensitive society, if The Boy does the wrong thing with the cotton balls because of all the time he's spent in the hospital with cotton balls in his dipes, will he get kicked out of preschool?

Other excitement: I went out for a lovely dinner with Aunt M, my cousin, and her husband. We ate at Shalom Bombay which is, as you can surmise, a Kosher Indian restaurant. I love Indian food! Sometimes it doesn't love me, but it seems (hopefully) to be sitting fine today. Maybe the fact that it is Kosher...?

Anyhow, The Boy gets out tomorrow. Hopefully next time around, we can get in the door REALLY early, start chemo at 9 AM or so, and then get discharged in the evening. But then, next chemo is "only" 3 days. It also does not require the extra medication to prevent kidney damage (somewhat ironic). One of the meds that he's getting next time is the one that has the potential to cause some upper register hearing loss. The audiologist who tested The Boy initially said that she had a Wilms patient coming off treatment earlier in the day who still tested just fine on her hearing test. Even if he does lose some hearing, my impression is that he won't be able to hear the "mosquito" ring tone anymore, but he'll be able to hear what he needs (the "mosquito" is a very high pitched sound that only younger people can hear because they haven't lost their upper register hearing).

Almost Christmas. Not that I have anything going on, and, oh yea, I'm Jewish, but I still enjoy it. We have plans to stay home and hibernate.