Admitted to hospital

Pretty much always on a Sunday...

Terence was at work today. For most of it we had a pretty relaxing day. The girls and I did go for a bit of a walk at the shopping centre, just to get out the house a bit. Late this afternoon, Bianca had a bit of a runny tummy (I sure hope she did not catch anything from Terence). Several times today she would cough a bit sounding as if she was trying to clear her throat and then at one point Bianca complained that her left ear was sore. I asked her how long it was sore and she said "a hundred years". She didn't have a temperature, but then Dexamethasone did this to us before where Bianca was fighting an infection and she had no high temperature.

So Terence called the hospital and they suggested we bring her in for the doctor to have a look. When we told Bianca we were going to the hospital, she smiled and said "I will need a yellow bead for staying in the hospital". She really does associate each treatment or procedure with a specific bead.

So then of course we had to scramble to pack a bag (for just in case) and off we went. Thank you so much Sanna for looking after Caitlyn for me.

We waited a bit and then saw a registrar who had a quick look at Bianca and then they called the paediatric oncologist locum. We are still waiting for full blood count to come back, but in the meantime they admitted Bianca just as a precaution and she will be getting some antibiotics. She has several bruises on her legs which apparently looks different than the bruises with low platelets and it could mean clusters of bacteria under the skin or something like that. I learn new things every single day.

So now Terence is staying with Bianca tonight and I will be there tomorrow during the day and then we will see what they say and how long we may have to stay. And here I was hoping our maintenance phase would be boring.

So as I was driving home at 10pm tonight from the hospital, they played the song Maggie from Foster and Allan. That brought back some memories. My mom, aunt and several other people I knew used to listen to this song. I remember that those days sometimes felt tough, of course everything feels tough when you are a teenager and of course there is nothing worse than getting all that homework from school... In hindsight those days were a much simpler time, much less complicated than now and I wonder, when I look back in years to come, whether I will think "wow, this time was surely a much simpler time" or "wow, what a challenging time".

Medicines today:

• Mercaptopurine (chemo) - 2 tablets a night (this is taken every single night)
  
• Dexamethasone (steroid) - 2 tablets twice a day (this is taken 5 days every month)