Chillin' at Children's: Day 1

This isn't quite live-blogging since I'm not updating as things happen, just keeping note so I can post the final product later (and "later" is now!).

6:40am
Late start waking up, but the extra sleep was needed. I aim to drop Finn off at daycare at 7:00 (it's usually ends up being closer to 7:15), so we don't have long to get ready. He just woke up too. Mandy is getting a late start to work, so she is telling him good-bye and he's already ramping up to drop a massive fit as soon as she walks out of the house.

6:45
Mandy is down in the kitchen and just yelled up to Finn that his egg is hatching. He got a large egg for his birthday that you soak in water until it hatches out a baby dinosaur. His mood just flipped from my-parents-start-of-the-day-is-gonna-suck to I'm-the-happiest-boy-alive.

6:50
Finn was super excited and is now getting dressed without a fuss. He's still beaming from when Mandy referred to him as a Dino Daddy before she left.

7:10
Home from dropping off Finn at Jamie's house. Julia is up and reading. Have to get her dressed, teeth brushed, breakfasted, and finished packing to be out the door around 8:00ish.

8:05
Heading out - not too bad. Julia just finished her book after only about 15 minutes of driving - I guess she'll have to just sight-see for the rest of the trip.

9:05
Sitting in the Oncology clinic. Because Julia's port got twisted in her little traumatic episode after her last hospital stay, it's not as straightforward to access it. So we decided to have wonder nurse Tom (he makes the kids call him that(not really)) access her because he knows just how to do it.

10:00
Just got into Julia's room on 8th floor. Corner room, seems smaller than average, but has a nice view (I would rather have larger than average and a brick wall view).

10:15
I'm heading back up to the room with the rest of our things from the car, plus a little extra for Julia. I stopped in at the Geek Squad office located in Children's and borrowed two DS games for her.

10:45
People are constantly coming in to check Julia, ask us questions, check equipment, etc. Mary, the nurse practitioner did the checkup on Julia and went over any questions we had.

11:15
I'm happy to be stepping out for a little while. Not that I need a break already, but Julia's psychologist, Sheri, just popped in and she's someone Julia will just jabber and jabber to about all sorts of things. She always is happy to talk to Sheri and that makes me happy. So I'll gladly sit here in the family resource center for a little while and read.

1:30pm
Julia is eating a late lunch of chicken tenders, a banana, and apple juice while watching some Good Luck Charlie.

3:00
Mary, the NP came in to say that Julia had a microscopic amount of blood in her urine and they'll respond to it with heightened fluids (i.e. peeing every 1.5-2 hours all night long) and an extra drug that will protect her bladder - one of the chemo drugs creates a by-product that is hard on the bladder. It's a little concerning because the urine sample was provided before chemo started.

3:25
Julia's oncologist, Dr. Chu, stopped just in. It's always nice to talk to a familiar face, at least for me - Julia will hardly say a word to her. Aside: I'm guessing Julia's non-stop chatter to a few people at the hospital and barely uttering a word to others has to do with the fact that the ones she talks to have nothing to do with administering or making decisions about her medical treatment. Dr. Chu was not at all concerned about the blood in the urine at this point. She said it was literally 2-3 red blood cells per zoomed in microscope view.

3:45
Julia is up and moving. We're taking a walk around the floor with a stop at the fish tank to see if the ol' puffer fish is still around. We see extra fish, but not him. Julia's theory is that if he puffs up big, he gets punished and the punishment might mean being removed from the tank.

3:55
We're now down in the play room and Julia is working on an art project.

4:20
I didn't mind that we were interrupted so that Julia could get a massage - the art project was a little too confusing for me anyway. It'll be something good for Julia and her mom to work on in a few days.

6:15
Supper time and a movie. Julia is having a ham and cheese sandwich, carrots with ranch, chips, and milk. I went down and grabbed a burger from the grill and brought it back up. The movie is Babe - Pig in the City. I might be enjoying it more if I was paying closer attention to it. But it's kind of dark and not as feel-goody as I was expecting.

7:45
Julia is on the phone with Mandy and she just asked, "Can I talk to the Dinosaur Daddy?" A few minutes later and she was saying in an aggravated voice, "Finn, just answer my question!"

8:00
Got PJs on Julia and now we're heading out for a few laps around the floor before bed.

8:30
I talked to the nurse while Julia motored around and she said that Julia's last urine sample showed no blood. Interesting.

8:45
I'm just going to finish this up while Julia reads in bed. I'm curious to see how comfortable the chair-bed is going to be for me. My plan is to take a shower and then read for a little while (as long as the light won't bother Julia).

I was hoping to add a little color or embellishment for humor's sake (like I did here, but I guess some situations don't lend themselves to that sort of thing. I'll try to update tomorrow evening again, but I might not get into the minutia of the day, like I did today.