Harry and Ester Snyder of the "In-N-Out" chain. Another reason to love "In-N-Out". Bless their souls and all the drive-thru restaurants out there! And bless the friend who reminded me today of their true coping value!
Germ high alert is the theme of this week. William's ANC should hit zero soon if it hasn't already. This reflects his immune system's ability to fight off any germs and he is at high risk for infection. If he continues with his trend of previous cycles, tomorrow afternoon he should spike a fever and then be immediately admitted to the hospital for a minimum 48 hours stay. However, he is doing great and I'm hopeful he can break trend: hasn't thrown up, no mouth sores yet, no bone pain. He's quite a bit more tired than usual (okay, we'll give him one side effect), and will probably be due for another blood transfusion by this weekend. We couldn't let the nurses miss us too much!
I spent all day Monday cleaning, sanitizing, and organizing after a two week absence from my daily to do lists. I must admit, I got a little carried away and did some deeper cleaning that perhaps wasn't needful, but this is a coping mechanism of mine. It could always be worse.... Tuesday I spent recovering. And today I spent cleaning and cycling rugs and towels through the laundry. This was not on the planned agenda.
I'm not sure where I went wrong, but somehow my boys have an incredible fascination with a flushing toilet. Unfortunately it's not when and what they should be flushing. I started my morning off pulling, yet another, toilet off the floor to snake it from the bottom up, hoping to find the clogging culprit. This makes toilet removal #4 in the past year. Numbers 1-3 were all within a 6 month period. Pulling a toilet off the floor is not my first line of defense. I plunge and snake and plunge and snake and let my frustration boil for a bit. It's gross and nasty and makes me have greater love for the plumbers out there, but I'm not willing to pay one . . . yet. After a few additional snakes and tilts of the toilet, Ryan pulled out a small plastic box from a travel sized dice rolling type game. Arggg! I installed a new wax ring and bolts and got the toilet back on and then began the cleaning and sanitizing. Again. But the bathroom smells delightful now!
William has been hard at work on his K'Nex roller coaster he earned for having finally hit 60 lbs. before surgery. Unfortunately he's back down to 52 lbs now, but he worked hard for the 60 lbs. He finished the roller coaster last night and it's his pride and joy. Today I let him go to the fire station with Sam and Cole and Sam's mom. The three of them are in a mad dash to finish their Wolf badge requirements for cub scouts before they turn 9. I was hesitant to let William go, since he is probably neutropenic today, but it's a fine line between restrictions that cancer defines and resilience and normalcy that he defines. Cancer lost. William had a fantastic time! The fire fighters were a little late for the tour because they just got back from a house fire and halfway through the tour the sirens went off and they all scrambled and left on a call to a car accident. Although the tour was cut short from the typical tour items, the boys loved seeing them quickly pull on all their gear and head out of the station. I'm glad William got to experience something exciting today.
The good thing about the Wolf requirements? You can do most of them at home without much trouble at all. Good to hear William's doing relatively well. Sounds like he had lots of fun at the fire station!
ReplyDeleteAnther great thing about In-n-Out and other drive-thrus is that they might help William get back up to 60 pounds! I can always think of a reason to go. Wish we had In-n-Out in our part of the world. Thank you for keeping us updated. You're in our prayers. Hugs to you all!
ReplyDeleteI'm gonna need some training for pulling off a toilet and fishing out treasures. I can see it coming with my brood. Hats off to you. Glad you are a in a period of almost normalacy.
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned sometime earlier that you had wax rings in your year's supply of essentials. Now we know it's really true. What a trooper! I'm glad that Will got to go to the fire station, and that someone else had an emergency besides him! Since I haven't heard from you about re-hospitalization, I'm hoping that Will and his transfusion beat the neutropenia and fever this time around. Lots of love to all those toilet clogging boys-soon they will be old enough to either quit doing the flush trick or learn how to pull it up themselves!
ReplyDeleteHA!
Julie
ReplyDeleteI know where you are coming from in regards to toilets and little boys. Mind you it has been at least 20 years that I have had to do what you have recently done with your toilet. Our son had a great fascination with toilets as well. I got into the habit of always keeping a beeswax ring on hand just in case the toilet had to be removed. I think that I still have one in the plumbing repair kit that I have.
One of the most interesting things that I had to get out of the toilet was a pop can. Yes a pop can, some how Nathan had managed to put a pop can just into the hole of the toilet, just so that you could not see it. I did manage to get it out. Another favorite was toothbrushes, not so easy to extract though.
Our prayers are with your family and we keep your family on the Toronto Temple prayer roll.