Another day in hospital

Dear SuperJack

Last Friday you had another blood transfusion which made you feel better again. Yesterday you went to hospital for another bone marrow aspirate. We stayed at Aunty Ky's house the night before because we had to be in hospital early for a blood test and appointment with Prof. Marshall.

You did pretty well at your blood test. We had time to walk up to the news agency in Randwick to pick up some footie cards as a reward for your braveness and arrived at oncology around 10am. Because you had woken up with a sniffly nose, they decided to keep you in isolation. That sounds a lot worse than it is because it means you get a private room :-). Unfortunately, it also meant that they had to put you last on the list for the bone marrow aspirate because they didn't want you to spread your germs in the operating room. (As if the airconditioning in the hospital wouldn't do that!) They also had to suck some mucus out of the back of your nose to analyse it and make sure you didn't have a bacterial infection. It looked very uncomfortable to me but you were again very brave.

Prof. Marshall came in (dad had also arrived for that meeting) and said he was baffled with your blood results, as your platelet count had gone up! Whilst last week he was talking about a bone marrow transplant and getting Maya and Emily tested to see if they were suitable donors, he now suggested we may just put you on the drugs for aplastic anemia, or maybe even do nothing and see what happens over the next few weeks! What an unexpected change! I now have a glimmer of hope that things are not that bad. The results of the bone marrow puncture will hopefully tell us more. In any case, you have the hematology and oncology team at the hospital very puzzled and intrigued!

Around 4.15pm you were finally wheeled into theatre. I stayed with you until you were asleep and then went to see Charlie and Maryanne who had just arrived to say hello. I also ran downstairs to get you the usual 'after-surgery chips and pie', because you hadn't eaten since 7am.
Unlike the first two times, you woke up crying and nauseous.  Luckily, it didn't take long before you felt better and could eat your food, talk a bit to Charlie and look at all the presents he had brought for you. Around 6pm we all left the hospital. Peak hour traffic on the way home, damn! You fell asleep in the car so I transferred you to your bed in your clothes.

Luckily you woke up without much pain from the procedure. Dad picked you up at 9am.

Tomorrow, you'll be going back to school for the first time in almost 6 weeks. Very exciting! Unfortunately, the school policy doesn't allow teachers to take your temperature (whilst fevers can be so dangerous for you) so they'll just call us if they suspect a temperature. Grrrr, risk management gone out of control! (The other day I was told at Maya's childcare centre that they couldn't use the nappy rash cream I had put in her bag because it didn't have the pharmacy label with instructions on it. For God's sake, you just buy that cream at the supermarket!) I think I'm going to teach you to use and read a thermometer so you can check your temperature yourself whenever you don't feel well.

I'm very proud of you for being so brave yesterday. It was a long and difficult day but you did really well.

Let's hope your blood counts will keep improving and we'll soon have our healthy Jack back.

Love
Mum