Update 7

7 updates!

We must be getting near the end.

We have moved back to the children's ward's normal location and it's really cramped compared with upstairs. We have 4 beds in a bay/room, with a wall fold-down bed beside each one for parents to sleep on. It's really good, but when we were upstairs there were 4 beds in a room, and 2 were for children, 2 for adults. The rooms were bigger too. It was luxury! Downstairs we are "cosy" (cramped). But everything is much closer, the nurses are happier and all the stuff we need is right at hand. Also it's less of a walk to the pie shop and Acorn House. The move went fairly smoothly, though Joe had some new treatment that day, so it was a bit confusing for us.

There's a cold going round the staff on the ward so things take a long time. We are pretty low risk compared to others and so we have often had to wait quite a while. On Weds Joe waited 5 hours with anaesthetic cream on his hands waiting for a cannula to be put in so he could go on a drip for some anti-fungal meds. Poor Joe knows exactly what the cream means (that he's going to have needles stuck in him) and so it was 5 hours of dread. I suspect that since we had breakfast (2 eggs, 1 sausage, 1 hash brown, 1 cup milk!), school, painting & sticking, Wallace & Gromit DVD, reading, making a card game and lunch in the meantime, Joe might have thought it wasn't going to happen. But it did. It was his bravest and quietest needle to date! I was quite cross that he had had to wait in dread so long, but apart from that it worked out fine.

Hope the cannula works today. He's having his Vinc through it. Apparently the Vinc is such nasty stuff that they have to be 100% sure it goes into a vein and not into tissue, as it would be dangerous. So they have to have a cannula that bleeds back (ie you can get blood out through it, as well as put stuff in) or they put in a new one. Blimey. Poor kid's forearms and backs of hands are covered in bruises and blood dots. They had to use his foot the other day. I don't know how many of you have read Trainspotting, but it doesn't bear thinking about ...

Still no news about when he will be out. The Registrar yesterday said that 28 days was pretty standard, and we couldn't tell if she was just being cautious or guarded or what. I can't see him staying in beyond 28 days, but Sue is keen as mustard to get him out and home, and asks the doctors most days. I think they may have given us the best outcomes when they told us everything at the start, and we thought they would be giving us good news as the time went by. It looks like good news is when things carry on as first expected, without getting worse. This perhaps requires from us a bit of a shift in thinking! The Registrar kept going on about "Nowadays", which was a bit baffling as she was not old by anyone's standards. Maybe treatment has moved on a lot recently. Or maybe it was just flannel as she didn't really have the seniority to tell us.

The psychological sides to all this are interesting (though not fun). You never know exactly why someone says something in answer to a question: are they being evasive? do they know the answer? are they able to make that decision? is it a question noone can answer? do they want you to think the best? the worst?

Anyway, we are getting a bit jaded now. Running out of things to talk about from hospital. I read a sort of blog the other day about a girl with leukemia. It got very dull very quickly: "today was an up day. She went shopping. Today was a down day. She went home early..." Hope these news notes don't get so dull. On the other hand it's good that there's not too much to write about: "no news" is "good news". It's like being at the far end of the ward: it's remote, but it means things are going well.

Another time I'll tell you all about the people we've shared our bays with. Leukemia and illness in general do not pick and choose. You get all sorts, much as you'd expect. But it's still interesting to meet them all. And sometimes entertaining. And sometimes not. At all.

Theresa is round with Alfie now, and has offered to cook tonight (though she now claims that Sue counter-offered that I would cook, ... thanks Sue, but lets go for the free meal).