DAY 5
Today has just had disaster written all over it, so if we make it out from this day without anything completely terrible happening, I’ll be incredibly relieved. So far it has been one of those days where everything, everything has gone wrong. Many of the things have been little, neglible things that on a normal day would rate a “meh, oh well” reaction but today are all adding themselves up to produce one seriously irritating day.
As I mentioned in the previous post, I spent last night at home because I wanted to go to a yoga class. In hindsight, this was an incredibly stupid decision to do this on the day before transplant. I had taken a load of stuff home to do laundry and organize, and was shooting to be at the yoga studio by 8:00. I left the hospital just after six, and due to some wicked rain and traffic, arrived home at 7:00 with just enough time to eat a bowl of oatmeal (pretty much the only thing in the house) and throw my things together before leaving for yoga. The class was good, but it was a hot yoga class, and I think I failed to drink enough water. I have a problem with hydration, in that I never feel thirsty, so I actually will forget to drink anything for say, a whole day, and then fall apart and wonder what’s wrong with me. Anyway, hot yoga is very detoxifying, and I guess because I haven’t done it in so long, was hungry, and didn’t drink enough, I actually felt awful when it was over. I went home and scrounged a weird meal from the cupboards, threw Gavin’s laundry on and tried to go to sleep.
My day started at 4:30 in the morning when I woke up, wondering why I was awake. It was then I heard a noise in the hall, fear shot through me, and I thought, “oh great, someone’s in the house! Just what I need.” I heard the noise again, and realized with relief and annoyance that it was actually a leak from the ceiling. I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear it, I thought, and go back to sleep. At 5:00 I woke up and heard the same noise, but in the bedroom this time. We have an old and leaky house that we’ve been neglecting, and I guess yesterday’s rain was a bit too much for it. I got up and stumbled around the house looking for towels and buckets and tried to fix the problem and go back to sleep. When I woke up I felt like I’d been doing shots of Jagermeister until 4:00 am. I wanted to try to get to the hospital as early as possible because I knew that Craig would not be able to get his coffee and would be dying for one. As quickly as I could I packed up the things we needed for the next stage and got in the car.
I was also dying for a coffee and thought my headache could have been due in part to caffeine withdrawal, plus detox. I managed to get to the hospital by 10:00, after fighting traffic again all the way back, did the Starbucks thing and was SO looking forward to drinking that coffee. I kept thinking, “I can’t wait to have this coffee.” Of course, I walked into the anteroom of Gavin’s isolation pod and promptly dropped my coffee on the floor, and then burst into tears. “It’s just a coffee, sweetheart,” one of the PSAs said consolingly. (Um, yeah, I’m crying because I dropped my coffee.) Please! Anyway, I went in and said good morning, was talking to Gavin and trying to have a bit of my sandwich when Gavin dropped a plastic bag on the floor, slipped on it, fell over and banged the back of his head before I could stop him. AAAAAGH! Tears flowed on both our parts. My first thought was “internal bleeding” but the nurse quickly reassured me that his platelet count is okay today.
As I struggled to get it together, I cuddled Gavin on my lap for a little while. I then realized his diaper had leaked all over my lap. His pee is still quite toxic and so should be avoided at all costs. Great. I have to say that Craig laughed long and hard at me when he came back with a fresh coffee. Glad I could provide some comic relief. I then had to return to the car to scrounge up some pants that weren’t peed on and could only find clean pj pants. Oh well, fashion is the least of my concerns right now.
Once back upstairs we began the process of getting Gavin into the “clean” room. We washed him in antibacterial soap, gowned up in yellow gowns and removed shoes and scrubbed in before heading in there. The one thing I neglected to take care of yesterday was the washing of Monkey and Minnow. Gavin has been cranky and out of sorts today, no surprise there, and started begging for Monkey. We were allowed to bring Monkey in in a ziploc but couldn’t take him out, which Gavin was not pleased about. It was starting to be naptime, and so we decided that I would take care of the rest of the stuff and get Monkey and Minnow washed. I raced around the hospital,taking our stuff to the car, pushing a stroller full of crap that kept falling out, being terse to nurses who are just trying to be nice to me, and struggling not to just constantly weep.
However, I knew that the transplant would be happening soon and didn’t want to miss it. But I also knew that he would be begging for M and M when he woke up. Which is why Gavin is currently undergoing a stem-cell transplant whilst I wait for M and M to finish drying!! I can’t believe it. The timing of today has been completely and totally off, and I couldn’t feel more like a parental failure for not being there.
Craig says the transplant has gone okay so far and Gavin is sleeping through it. The next couple of weeks are going to be a long haul.