Done!

First chemo at the new hospital is done!

I am very much looking forward to the fact that we do NOT have to go to the hospital for counts! How cool is that?! Instead, the nurse comes twice a week, does the blood draw, and if we need something, like a transfusion or a followup test, we come in at that point. No more waiting around for 2 hours with both children just to be told that we don't need anything.

I am also feeling perfectly fine about taking a break from Vasotec for potassium levels. That's the stuff that messes with his red cells. Not that his red cells can do much for themselves at this point anyway.

Meatball had a pretty good day today. He's been letting me sleep, bless his heart! He gets up to eat at 5 but then goes back to sleep! If he gets up and stays up, I go exercise. This morning, I did a little bit anyway, and Meatball sat in the chair. I was able to do 10 minutes, which is better than no minutes.

Every so often, my mother calls someone to come over and help out at the house. As in, someone to watch Meatball for a few minutes so that I can get something done. I have taken that time to unpack a few boxes every time. Today we had Aunt Jeanne, our friend who came to visit us several times in NJ and now here. It's only 40 minutes or so for her now as opposed to 6 driving hours, plus whatever stops she makes. She's great because she REALLY knows Meatball.

On the subject of Meatball and his temperament: Musical Daddy and I have always believed that babies are little bio-feedback machines. If you are stressed, they'll feel it, and they'll feed it right back to you. Meatball is definitely that sort of baby, who will easily feed you your stress. And even stress that you never knew you had. The proper response to Meatball, if he is crying and has already been fed and changed, is NOT to try frantically to soothe him by bouncing him around. Sometimes he just wants to be put down in bed and avoid the bio-feedback function altogether. Other times, he wants to be held and rocked to sleep. From there, he can be moved into another location. He's actually pretty good about that--when he falls asleep, he can be placed elsewhere. That said, he can also fall asleep on his own.

So that's Meatball...The Boy has done REALLY well with this chemo. It helps that he only received half of the Carboplatin that he otherwise would have gotten. They are going to work their way back up toward a full dose. When they said that they're going to finish the whole chemo, they're going to do all of the rounds, but they may cut doses from time to time if they need to.

Going to cut this short. Everything is great here. Everything except being without Musical Daddy. We all miss him. Thank goodness for technology.