Friday, February 6, 2009

A Smoother End to the Week

Despite the bumpy start to the week, things seemed to have smoothed out nicely. Beginning Wednesday night, Katie starting feeling better and became more willing to interact with others in a pleasant and playful way. Thursday, I (Rick) took her to Fletcher Allen for a follow-up appointment that was nothing more than a blood count. I haven't gotten the numbers yet, but I am expecting that to be good news. When the news is bad, they call right away.

Katie had a great day in Burlington yesterday. She napped all the way there, and by the time we got into the hospital she was full of energy. Normally, she wants to ride in the stroller from the car up to Pediatric Oncology on the fourth floor of Fletcher Allen. Thursday, she walked in like she owned the place. She sang her ABCs in the waiting room and belted them out again as the nurse was taking her blood pressure. She then led the way to the room where her port would be accessed for the blood draw.

We had to wait for a bit before the doctor was available so Katie was allowed to leave the room to visit another 3 year old patient down the hallway. On the way, she decided to show the doctors and nurses what she could do, so she lined up on her own imaginary starting line, counted to 10, yelled "Go!" and took off running down the hall. She proceeded to repeat this process over and over again, running the full length of the hall each time and telling the doctors to cheer and clap for her as she ran by. I lost count of the number of laps that she did, but she ran for more than 10 minutes. Any doctor or nurse who heard this going on and wasn't in the middle of working with a patient, came out to see her run.

From there, I took her to visit her cousins. Because of the nuetropenia, she hasn't seen her cousins since before Christmas. In fact, we still have Christmas presents for them sitting in a closet waiting for both families to get together before opening them.

Hopefully, that good feeling transfered over to day care and she is having a good day there today.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

hello from 13 miles out,
just wanted to let you know im thinking of you all. low on phone minutes or would have called sooner. things out here are cold and windy, havent returned to work yet, but soon. other things seem to be falling into place, developing as to be expected. anyway, sorry to hear things still have been up and down, but hopefully the ups become more frequent. sounds like katie still finds time to have fun and be a kid. tell josh i sat and watched seals sunning on the rocks the other day, and rick, i tried iceboating for the first time. pretty cool, like twenty miles an hr. i think of you all often, special regards to the kids.
love,
john