A quick visit yesterday

Yesterday I managed to visit Bianca in hospital. I didn't take Caitlyn up to the ward with me for a number of reasons - 1) we have to pay for parking at Starship Hospital, 2) the room is really small and having a busy 22 month old running around trying to pull at all the wires - probably not a good idea, 3) she's had a runny nose which seems to be gone, but with Bianca not having neutrophils it's better not to take the risk. The idea was that I would visit and Terence would look after Caitlyn. It was a rainy day which meant outside activities were out and so Terence and Caitlyn went to the shopping centre in Newmarket (not too far from hospital) for a walk-around and for lunch.

Bianca certainly seemed happier and asked to draw some pictures and I even convinced her to eat a slice of bread, some rice crackers and to drink some water and chocolate milk. She's given me a list of some things to bring for her and so this morning I'll sort it out before I leave for the hospital. She wants me to sleep there tonight and so Terence will come home with Caitlyn and spend the night at home.

I think Bianca may have stumped them a little bit. She still has the regular runny tummy but so far every single test has come back negative for bugs. In the meantime she is getting IV antibiotics just in case, more as a preventative rather than to treat something specific (because quite frankly they haven't figured out what exactly is causing the runny tummy). I noticed on the blood tests yesterday that her haemoglobin was up a bit, but platelets down a bit and her white cell count came up a little bit. Still too low to get a neutrophil count, so she is very much still neutropenic. And her temperature is also busy coming down a bit, sitting in the mid 37's rather than above 38 and 39 - so that is a good thing.

Terence indicated that last night Bianca had about an hour where her tummy was very sore. They had a doctor in who said it is probably the effects of her runny tummy and so they gave her some Ibuprofen for it.

The registrar yesterday said that as long as Bianca's counts continue to climb she might very well still be able to attend camp this coming Sunday. Of course part of me is thinking that her neutrophils are so very low at the moment and not really rising very quickly and we are now at Tuesday so only a few days left for those counts to recover sufficiently. And of course I just really want them to sort out whatever it is that is causing her to have this runny tummy all the time. It would be great if we could just get back to normal again.

And now I have to go and get ready so I can go and take over from Terence.