If you had been at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto yesterday, you would have seen a woman in a striped shirt sternly chiding a hyperactive little boy in the line for Starbucks. You might have rolled your eyes at this lady’s major over-reaction to some 4-year-old shenanigans. Or you might have felt sympathy for her as she struggled to just keep her son at her side as over and over he giggled and tried to run away.

You have failed only when you have failed to try. Act as if it were impossible to fail and it will be. – motto at Camp Ooch

Camp. Do you remember camp? Pine trees and mosquito bites, smelling like campfire and bug spray, singing songs and learning useful skills like archery. Making new friends and surviving canoe trip. Mail from home, and escape from city life. Camp = quintessential Canadian childhood.

It seems that all of my freaking out yesterday about the ultrasound wasn’t entirely illogical. They did find something unusual, luckily it is not a malignant growth lurking in there or anything horrendous. It seems that Gavin has quite the fluid collection pooling in his lower right abdomen.

It’s normal for VP shunt people to have fluid floating around in their abdomens, because the shunt puts it there, duh, so it makes sense, but this little collection is a bit different. Neurosurgery thought it was worth looking into, but it’s not in their line of work so they passed us on to general surgery.

A little while ago, while doing a Google search when Bean was ill, I came across mention of this syndrome. Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome. Sounds pleasant, yes?

From what I understand, this consists of bouts of vomiting that arise seemingly from nowhere and with no other real symptoms to speak of. Barfing continues for a certain number of days, the patient gets better, and then usually the same period of time elapses before the patient falls ill again. Familiar?

I am quite late in getting this up here but just wanted to let all fans of the Gavinator know that his most recent MRI on March 25th was clear.

The months in between scans go quickly and it is always difficult getting over each scanxiety hurdle, but it does feel a teeny bit less difficult as time goes on. I even gave Craig permission (ha) to go out that same evening while I waited for the call at home. One of Bean’s doctors rang at 9:00 at night to tell me all was well, as I knew it would be. Still my heart hammers when the phone rings.

Like most four-and-a-half-year-olds, Gav can come out with some pretty hilarious things sometimes. Here are a few recent diamonds:

I don’t like this plastic fork, I need a metal one. This one is so… unstabby.

At the beach:

Hahaha! That wave just splashed me in the penis!

Last night we were doing face-paints, something we like to do often. Gavin was painting my face to look like an animal of his imagination, and this was his running commentary:

We DID get to Florida after all, although it was a near thing.

I sent Mr. Gav to school on the Tuesday morning, and we were leaving on Wednesday. When I collected Beanie from school, I was alarmed to find him lethargic and exhausted. In the car on the way home he complained of being “so tired” and kept saying, I need to go to sleep. I need to lie down. At home I carried him to the couch and poured some water down his throat. A few minutes later he perked up, like a dehydrated plant. After some questioning I discovered that he had had NOTHING to drink all morning, through some parental miscommunications (ouch) and strictly enforced school rules that prevented him from going to the water fountain. Seeing him revive like that brought it home yet again how dangerous dehydration is for him, and I resolved not to let it happen again.

Just a quick post to let everyone know that Gavin has been admitted to the neurosurgery unit for observation and hydration.

He started feeling ill on Tuesday of this week (today is Saturday) and vomited a couple of times then. Wednesday he felt quite well in the morning and I was wondering if I had kept him home from school prematurely. But by the afternoon he was vomiting continuously. Unfortunately, Thursday and Friday both passed in a haze of barfing. Obviously, he has not eaten and has nothing left but whatever water/pedialyte he drinks comes up immediately. In between times he has been very lethargic and sleepy, but behaves appropriately when awakened. We have been worried about hydration but made the call last night NOT to bring him in, hoping to spare him an IV, but in retrospect that was not the right decision.

Aaaaaand, just for something completely different, here we are again. Bean is sleeping on the couch and I am bound to the house and trying to squash anxiety and keep busy. But since we’ve been here before, every six weeks since October, I am starting to get used to this.

I neglected to mention in my previous post that our return from our amazing trip to Australia was less than amazing, when a day or so after landing Gav caught yet another bug. Despite my best efforts to keep him in a sanitary bubble on the plane by scrubbing all surfaces with anti-bac wipes and spritzing him with hand-sanitizer, he still picked something up. On the 3rd day of continuous barfing, we took him to a walk-in to have his ears checked. There was no sign of an ear infection, but he was getting dehydrated and we knew it. Together with the walk-in doc we decided to go to the ER for hydration.

In the weeks leading up to our December 19th departure, I managed to insert the fact that we were going to AUSTRALIA into almost every chat that I had. And most of the time this info resulted in a response along these lines: “Oh you’re going to Australia, how wonderful. I’ve always dreamed of going there - but the flight is just so expensive. And long.” Yes, the flight is expensive. Yes, it is long.