November 24, 2006 - Turf Wars and Turkey Dinners

Sheesh, a girl gets a blog and suddenly she gets all reflective and philosophical! I'll try not to let that happen too often. Let's just blame that last posting on the holidays.

Anyhoo, we're almost done with round 2 (which is to say that Lillian is almost done with round 2). We knew this was going to be a different visit from the time we got to the room, lucky number thirteen. Jeff was running out to the car to bring in our things and I stepped over to the pantry to grab some milk for Lillian. When I returned, I found her trying to climb out of her bed! A far cry from the listless little girl of 8 days prior. And she has figured out how to push the buttons to move the bed up and down. But hey, whatever makes her giggle!

Her first appointment on Wednesday was for a hearing test. (One of the potential side effects of this particular chemo drug is a loss of hearing so she takes a hearing test before each round.) I told my mom that it would be no big deal since it's primarily just playing with toys. Famous last words! She screamed through the whole thing. Finally the audiologists suggested that we call them once she had fallen asleep for her nap and they would come to a quick test while she slept. So we headed up to the clinic to check in for our next appointment and 5 minutes later she was asleep in her stroller. Back to the hearing room we went and the test was over 2 minutes later with Lillian sleeping through the whole thing. (Her hearing is good by the way.)

She again is tolerating the chemo very well. Praise God! She's playing and watching videos and we're going for lots of walks. Somehow we managed to get in the middle of a turf war between oncology and neurosurgery over her shunt sutures. All we needed was for neurosurgery to look at the sutures to tell us whether they needed to be removed. Apparently neurosurgery preferred to answer that question over the phone. As we have discovered, the communication between departments is a bit rough and a times even tenuous. For my Nike friends, it often reminds me of work and particularly of the SMU process. Well let's suffice it to say that hopefully Lillian won't need the services of this particular neurosurgery resident anytime soon. And I've gained a valuable lesson to apply to my job.

Thanksgiving was pretty low key which was fine with us. They served a wonderful meal on Wednesday night and the hospital administration supplied pies on Thursday. A far cry from the china platted feast we traditionally enjoy at home but a worthy meal nonetheless.

We're looking forward to completing her final chemo drugs today and going home late tomorrow afternoon. Though now familiar, the "ched," as I've termed the chair that converts to a bed, is just not the same as our comfy king bed at home. Hope you all are recovering from yesterday's festivities and are enjoying the sale-extravaganzas today!