DAY 1
The next few months feel quite like a prison sentence. So much so, that I can’t even think about it in terms of three months, I can only think in small chunks of time that are manageable, so much more so than thinking of Gavin staying cooped up inside a hospital for these precious long months of his little life.
All the treatment that has come before pales in comparison to what we are facing now. Gavin accepts that we must go to the hospital, and he know what it has been like there before, so he went along relatively willingly this evening when we closed up the house. I crumbled as I locked the door, knowing that I’ll be back in a few days to check in, but it may be a very long time before my little man comes home again.
We arrived on 8B and walked through the three sets of closed doors that wall it off from the outside world, stopping to do the obligatory hand-washing on the way in. Our nurse showed us to our new room, which will be ours for only the next four days, so that is the amount of time I’m allowing myself to think about. We have to get through the next three days of chemo, then on Thursday we move to a “clean” room and he receives his first transfusion of his own stem cells.
So for these next three days, we are free to leave the room, thank God, as the isolation rooms are small to the extreme. We cannot leave the floor or go outside but we can at least walk outside of the ward on the eighth floor, or perhaps go to the Starlight Room if possible. Come Thursday, we must wash all of our things in antiseptic cleaner, and enter the clean room, and stay for two weeks. When Gavin’s counts have remotely recovered again, we will be free to leave the hospital, but only for two days, before we have to come back. I haven’t yet decided how Gavin would react at being taken home for only two days and then having to return, so I don’t know what we will do then.
I left Gavin with Daddy tonight and we will spend the day together tomorrow as Gavin receives his chemo. I have to admit that I felt a wave of relief as I left the ward, relief and guilt and crushing sadness. I bawled my way to the elevators, but then scrambled to get it together as I ran into a nurse I know. I was thankful for that, because I really don’t want to spend the next months shedding useless tears. Yes, there are times that I must cry, things sometimes seem so terrible and hopeless, but I don’t want Gavin to see me like that. (Although he has) I want him only to see my smiling face, and to remember in future that all through these dark days mama did her best to play with him, teach him, entertain him and help him through this incredibly unfair and painful process. And things are NOT hopeless. He is strong, he is brave, and he will get through this.
This is only the first day. Please, all of our friends, send us your prayers, thoughts and energy. Now we need it more than ever.