2008-07-01

A visit to Daddy's work

Is it Christmas already? K-Mart seemed to think so - probably to get rid of some of the last stock or something, but I wonder who will really be buying their Christmas trees in July.


Yesterday Terence took us to his office and showed us around. It is much smaller than the Wellington office, and Terence shares an office space with another part-time person.


Bianca loved seeing all the books and one of the kind ladies who works there showed Bianca a couple of interesting books.

Yesterday I received confirmation of Bianca's hospital appointment next week. Bianca will have no food or drink from 7:30am apart from the oral Acyclovir at around 11:30 with a little bit of water. She will be seen by a Doctor Scott Macfarlane at around 10:30am (and they will probably start her Vincristine at this point), but we will need to do bloods before the time at the hospital lab, so we'll probably need to be there around 9:30am. This is one thing that is different to how Wellington works - in Wellington we don't have to visit a separate lab for bloods it all gets done on the ward in the treatment room.

Then she is on the afternoon theatre list which starts at 1:30pm and at this point in time she is third on the list as they work in order of age. But of course things may change and I'm not yet sure what time we will be all done and ready to go home.

The nice thing about Starship is that I will be able to collect her script from the hospital pharmacy while Bianca is in theatre - which in Wellington I would have to pick up at an external pharmacy.

So apart from the Methotrexate (chemo) injected into her spine through a lumbar puncture, Bianca will also get Vincristine (chemo) which will probably be an IV infusion. I'm not sure if they will continue with the 400mg Acyclovir 4 times a day or whether it will be reduced and not too sure what they plan to do with regards to the Dexamethasone (steroid). At this point Bianca is still off the Dexamethasone and I'm not sure if they plan to start it again or change it for something else or keep her off the steroids completely. I will also have to discuss the IVIG transfusions with them and so it will be interesting to see whether Bianca will continue to get these or not.

And then, unless Bianca has become neutropenic since her last blood test, we will also have her daily oral Mercaptopurine (chemo) in the evening. At the moment she is sitting at 75% of the dose and it will be interesting to see if they up it or not.

It is starting to feel very real that Bianca will be at a new hospital where we don't yet know anybody and don't yet know the processes and things like that. It is comforting when things are familiar, but I feel confident that soon we will feel right at home.

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