When I first proposed the title for this blog entry, Rick agreed immediately: "Sounds right." With a good DSL connection and some help from our friends at Yahoo, I whiled away the hours tonight, trying to understand some very technical aspects of Katie's blood test results. I don't know what compelled me to waste time this way, but I did learn a lot. I have no idea why I need to know any of this information--Katie's doctors have everything under control--but one question led to another ad infinitum until I realized that time was passing and that vacation ends with our first day back at school tomorrow. My quest began with some of Katie's test results from Monday. I was specifically interested in her metabolic panel, a set of results I had never considered and didn't understand at all. I needed help reading the document to begin with, and when I had identified a few items that were funky, I had to know why they were abnormal. Once I had identified the problem, I needed to know the cause. And so it went. Two hours later, I knew what I have known all along: Chemotherapy is really toxic.
Katie is fine--really. And I have more precise information about the drugs she takes and their effects. But I don't know that I have gained much. (Do I NEED to know how antimetabolite medications disturb cell division or how this affects enzymes in the liver?) Parenting a child with leukemia is a little bit like taking a biochemistry class. Do you remember that high school chemistry teacher who promised that all that information would come in handy some day? She was right. I should have paid more attention. Thanks to Mrs. Voorheis, my high school biology teacher, for providing some of the basic information that makes all of this easier to digest!
The source of all this madness is in her own bed for once, sleeping peacefully as freezing rain hits the skylight above my head. I should follow her lead and head for bed. It will be good to get back to work tomorrow. Good night, all.
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