Another Day Done …

We are getting a little remiss now that we’re well into our second cycle. Got to the hospital at 11am this morning – they usually like us soon after 8am on days Adam needs blood taking (Mon, Wed, Fri) and 9am on days he doesn’t. Despite getting there so late, and being greeted by the doctor carrying the tray to do Adam’s stitch (as they refer to the injection), Adam insisted on having five minutes in the playroom first. To be fair, they are fine about being told what to do and when; Dr Lange in particular has a fantastic way with the kids, it just comes natural to him. When I shouted “Last one to the treatment room is a big banana” I didn’t expect the doctor to start running as well (the medical students shadowing him meanwhile just continued to trudge down the corridor)!

Because Adam had no pain during round one, but did have extreme tiredness (he mostly slept most days) and times when his blood pressure fell very low, the medical team proposed using a different pain medication this time round. Instead of intravenous morphine they asked us if we’d like to switch to something called gabapentin. We’ve agreed – the morphine will remain on standby if it doesn’t work out positively. We start the gabapentin tomorrow, it’s given in pill form and needs to be taken in advance of antibodies in order for it to build up inside the body.

For the past two days Adam has spent the morning playing in the hospital playroom with another little English boy called Ryan (whose parent’s gave up their room for us). He’s also on his second cycle, but a week ahead of Adam. He’s a couple of years younger than Adam. This morning it was nice to see Alexander joining in as well. He’s from Bulgaria (I think), and has been having a very difficult time emotionally with the morphine. On Wednesday Adam and Ryan were playing skittles and tin can alley and all poor Alexander wanted to do was kick the c&*% out it. Funny, but also not funny. It was good to see him getting back to more normal behaviour.

We also heard today that we can stay at the Elternhaus until Monday at least. Michael, who manages the property, made us laugh when he told us “On Friday you must not go anywhere!”. He is really helpful to the parents, and his English is actually very very good, it's just sentence construction that does sometimes makes us raise a wry smile.