Admitted to hospital

And as things go, plans changed. Last night Bianca started crying when she ate her supper and we discovered a cold sore on her tongue. We phoned the ward and we were told to bring her in on Monday (today). So this morning Sanna, Bianca, Caitlyn and I went to Wellington Children's hospital - Ward 19 Isolation (because of the shingles). Got there and waited for a bit and then we saw the doctor. He thought Bianca looked a bit better and we discussed being off chemo and why her liver is not working 100% at the moment and so on. They wrote a script for a mouth rinse that would numb Bianca's mouth and so would make it easier to eat. And they let us go with a firm reminder that she is still neutropenic. And then wait, wait, wait at the pharmacy.

So Sanna dropped me off at work and I managed to get a couple of hours in before Terence asked that I call him "we need to take Bianca back to hospital, they reviewed her case and decided she would have to be admitted for at least 5 days for IV meds". Okay, so then we left in a hurry, got home and had to pack.

Because it is isolation, they don't like to share toys from the ward due to risk of exposure to other children, so that means we have to pack enough things for Bianca to be entertained for the 5 days and of course enough clothes, and so on. If somebody walked into our house, they would have thought we were packing for holiday - if only...

But Bianca was pretty excited at the prospect of staying at hospital. She even put the skin numbing cream and dressing on herself and it is a bit sad that at 4 years old she is so familiar with these things, but in another way, it does feel comforting that she feels so comfortable at the hospital. It would have made it so much harder if she was scared of going or hated being there. We put Emla cream on the spot where they will be accessing her port sitting just underneath the skin. This is like having a permanent spot for drawing blood, attaching an IV line and so on. The cream takes about an hour to work and then it isn't sore when they put the needle in.

So here is Bianca and Terence's "home" for at least the next 5 days - Ward 19, Isolation room 5!

Bianca got a lesson in taking a pulse, here she is trying to listen if she can hear anything:

No, nothing! So time for the next part of the lesson:

And of course we don't go without our courage beads! We participate in the Beads of Courage programme and basically kids get a bead for every procedure, stay in hospital, port access, finger pricks, injections, special recognition, day of chemo and so on. If you ask Bianca why she gets all her beads, she will say "because I am so very brave".

Our amazing 4 year old, she is indeed very brave!