Hanging Out

Christmas was a traveling whirlwind. Good times, but not a lot of free time. We arrived back in River Falls yesterday afternoon and got Julia admitted to Minneapolis Children's Hospital this morning before 9:00. I've got some good Christmas pictures, but since I'm sitting in a hospital room right now (feet propped up on Julia's bed, her in it playing her DS, and Mandy napping on the couch), I won't be able to post them to the blog quite yet.

As I posted about a few weeks ago, a test result caused the doctors to tweak Julia's chemo treatment to the stronger side. That tweaking will mean a number of week-long, daily chemo treatments, which are usually administered inpatient. We did find out that it is possible to do these treatments outpatient, as long as she seems be handling them fine. We aren't sure how we feel about that though. She needs two hours of fluid, then an hour each of two chemo drugs, then another couple hours of fluids. Driving everyday would mean those six hours for Julia plus another two or more in the car. Our plan right now is to see how things go for the first few days and then make a decision after that.

We're hoping that the worst part about this week will be trying to not get too bored. Since Amanda is off from work this week, she'll be staying more at the hospital than me. I'll be trying to squeeze in a few days of work. My dad has again agreed to spend the week hanging out with Finn and Skippy, even if it meant spending his birthday (today!) away from home. The plan is that I'll leave the hospital early enough this afternoon to make it back to RF in time for a three-generations-of-Kauths guys night out birthday supper.

I hope to update again within a day or two to let people know how Julia's handling the new chemo and with some Christmas pictures.