IC Day 46 & 47

Nathan had a pretty good night on Wednesday night but his father had a little trouble sleeping in the hospital. Nathan was hooked up to a couple of machines because he was in there due to an allergic reaction. They were monitoring his heart rate, his lung rate, dissolved oxygen and pulse (why they do heart rate and pulse I don't know, I thought they would be the same); and then there was the usual IV machine. His oxygen monitor continuously set off the alarm even though Nathan was sleeping and was laying perfectly still. The alarm would go off, I'd get up and silence it and get the nurse. After the sixth time in a couple of hours I finally insisted that we either take that monitor off altogether or at least replace it and so they put a second monitor on a different finger without removing the first. Thankfully Nathan slept through all that. Not too long later the IV alarm went off indicating the IV was finished and so I went to silence that one as well but I hit the wrong button and turned it off - oops. I turned it back on and it asked if I wanted to reset.... and I went to find a nurse. Not sure where they all were in the middle of the night but there was no one to be found. I wandered around for about 10 minutes before I talked to a nurse from a different station and explained what I did. She came over and fixed it but was also confused by the settings and off she went to find our nurse as well. She came back a few minutes later and got it all set up again. Then at 5am they were in to give Nathan another Benadryl and Hydrocortisone shot and then shortly after 7am Nathan was up for the day and I was one tired puppy.

Nathan had a pretty good morning in the hospital and ate lots for breakfast. We were released at noon and that's when the hospital behaviour started again. Shelley and I are not fans of that behaviour because it really tests our patience and when I'm that tired, patience is not something I have a lot of. We eventually got home but it was a fairly tense and spirited ride. Thankfully, my sisters were at our house and Nathan went off to play with them while Shelley and I had a few moments to reset ourselves. The rest of Thursday went fairly well and even bedtime was relatively easy.

All the boys slept well Thursday night, but as usual Nathan was the first one up on Friday. The boys had a fairly easy day today, they didn't get outside as it was a little cold here and spent quite a bit of time on the Wii today. After dinner they were working on getting some Wii time for the afternoon so Nathan had to do an activity book. It was really great to see as Carter offered to help him and did a wonderful job of letting Nathan figure out which letters he needed to make. Carter would then remind him how to make that letter and give him a starting point and Nathan would make it. They did this very well for almost an hour and it was great to see. It's amazing what they can do when united for a good cause - like playing the Wii. Carter had music lessons, we did some family Wii after supper and then we played a game of monopoly before bed. Nathan was in very good spirits and he had a little colour back in his cheeks after being ghostly white all week. The boys all went to bed without much trouble this evening.

Hopefully we have a good weekend and then Nathan gets his last treatment for this Intensified Consolidation phase on Monday. He then gets the rest of the week off to make sure his counts are ready for the next phase which is called Augmented Interim Maintenance (AIM). Shelley got a new roadmap from the Cancer Center today since the one we had received on Monday was now no good. As we guessed, they will be replacing the PEG-Asparginase withe Erwinia L-Asparginase. The latter is supposed to have fewer allergic reactions to it however the downside is that it requires far more treatments. So instead of getting the PEG twice over 6 weeks, Nathan will receive the Erwinia L-Asparginase twelve times over the 6 weeks. Each treatment consists of two needles to his thighs and we wonder how that will go over. Nathan ended up with a large bruise to his left thigh from the one needle this past Monday so getting needles every two days may end up rather trying.

We realize that the Unexpected will continue to happen but as long as the treatments continue to progress and be successful, in that Nathan continues to remain in remission, well, that is all we are really praying for and we will handle the unexpected as best we can.