The Firetruck

On the day of Julia's kidney surgery, Finn went to Dawn and Jamie's house for the evening. As I was headed home from the hospital, Dawn brought Finn home to put him to bed. When they arrived at home, there was a giant toy firetruck on the front steps.

"Is this your firetruck, Finn?" Dawn asked him.

"No..." he said, "But maybe someone wants me to have it?" He does this cute thing where his voice gets higher at the end when he's asking a question. So if you can hear those words in the little Finny voice, it's even cuter.

He loves his new firetruck. I'm assuming it was left on purpose. There wasn't a note on it, so we don't know who left it. We would love to say thank you to whoever did, but if they want it anonymous, that's cool.

It was neat because it brought a huge smile and a laugh when Dawn told me the story and some more the next day when I told the story to Mandy at the hospital.

Today's Schedule

It was my turn to stay overnight at the hospital last night. Things went pretty well, aside from the normal routines of being woken up every few hours to be poked at by a nurse. Much love to the nurses, it just makes for choppy sleep.

Julia and I have been up since 6:00. She played her DS for awhile but it was hard to do with both hands IV'd and full of tape. Then we just sat and chatted, lounging in our hospital pjs.

The plan for today is to get a CT scan this morning. Some kids don't hold still for those and need to be sedated, but Julia's had multiple ones over the past few weeks and has done great with them every time. This particular one is a radiation simulation. The results will be used to calibrate her radiation therapy (starts next week) with her body so that when she comes in, everything will be programmed to hit in the all the right places.

This afternoon she is undergoing a minor surgery to install her chemo port. The chemo is scheduled to start next week too. The port is a little piece of metal put in under her skin on her chest. It is where they'll inject the chemo each time rather than needing to start an IV.

The plan at the moment is that the radiation and chemo will both be outpatient.