Day 45

Sibling Love

So as bad as Thursday was, today was just the opposite – at least it ended well.  Kennedy went home a day early!

Things were pretty rough all around for this hospital stay.  Apparently, our bag was the first of two chemo leaks at the hospital this weekend and they traced it back to some faulty tubing.  Thankfully the 2^nd leak didn’t happen to us but it is still frustrating.

Dr. Maddox

Another hiccup this weekend was lack of testing supplies for Methotrexate levels.  For Kennedy to be released, her Methotrexate level needed to be at .2.  This morning the level was at 3.5.  When they rechecked at noon, they apparently ran out of testing supplies and needed to send the blood out (which takes 4-6 hours versus 1 hour).  By 5pm, the outside lab had called and Kennedy’s level was down to .11.  Great news for us that she got to go home but had the hospital not run out of the testing supplies, we would have been home hours earlier.  Okay – enough complaining.  The victory is that she flushed the drug out of her system very quickly.  I'll just sum it up and say this stay wasn’t the best and hopefully our next five admits will turn out better.

Mom and Maddox's day out

Today Gene spent the day with Kennedy and I had some much needed one-on-one time with Maddox.  Maddox and I went to our classes and then rushed off to try and catch the Palatine parade.  Unfortunately, Maddox was completely crabby and we left 10 minutes after we got there.  I thought his crabbiness was due to him starting to get sick (he had a stuffy nose and was sneezing in the morning). I took Mr. Crabby home and we hung around and watched a movie.  Once he snapped out of his funk and his mysterious illness disappeared, we went for a scooter ride, headed for lunch at Rainforest Café and then were off to the hospital so dad and I could swap kids.  I was all set for my night - cousin Nicole even planned her evening to visit us in the hospital with K’s cousin Maya.

K and Cousin Maya

Right before I turned on 1^st avenue, Gene called – “Kennedy is going home!” We got there and the room was a happy place.  Cousin Nicole and Maya still came and hung out with us until we were discharged.  Maddox dressed up like the doctor and was messing around with the extra IV flush being a complete goof.  The only rough patch was K removing the sticky stuff around her port line – lots of tears but all was forgotten moments later.

Glow sand

When we got home we had a lot of fun just all being together.  We started a fire in the backyard and made s’mores and played bags.  Later the kids played with some glowy sand (which is a mess!) and then we all watched a movie.  Being home is so much better than the hospital so we all soaked up every second.  There is truly no place like home!