Welcome Wagon

On Kris's insistence, I had to be nice to the neighbors this weekend. A new little baby was admitted to the ward, and Kris thought the mum looked shellshocked and I should go to talk to her. Lots of women welcomed me when we first arrived and we decided it is my turn to help out. I drew in a deep breath and rapped on their door. The scene that awaited me was truly breathtaking; a beautiful girl with long golden locks sat cross-legged on the crib, breastfeeding a tiny baby. The setting sun created a halo around them - it was like a living, breathing Madonna and child. So naturally I became tongue-tied and awkward. She was very relaxed and tells me they are (not surprisingly) from Nelson. The baby has a tumor on her kidney and all the scans and such would be performed after the weekend. Total newbies, no idea what is going on or what is going to happen, so I start rambling about my experience and my sick baby. What the hell was I thinking? That poor girl. Their story is already so different from ours as we took two weeks of critical care in ICU to be deemed stable enough to be on the ward. They skipped that step entirely! I finished every sentence with "but everyone's case is different" and hoped that would ease the fear that was slowly creeping on her face. I am not a welcome wagon. I don't think I will be doing that again soon.

Since then I have been hiding in our room, trying to keep this girl from seeing Eleanor in all her distressed glory. She had a really rough weekend. Her mucousitis flared up, which means the lining of her digestive tract has been eroded by the chemo and she has meters and meters of inflamed tissue/sores. I have been sitting by her side, suctioning out gobs of mucous to prevent her from aspirating. She is on a morphine drip to control her pain and Benadryl to control the side-effects of the morphine. She has had brief periods of consciousness and she spends them crying or tripping out on her toys. It's pretty horrific, and is the exact opposite of what a newbie should be seeing. Today, however, her neutrophils are up from 0.00 to 0.02 and the secretions are subsequently improving. Just a few more days of misery and she should start feeling better. Maybe then I will try again to be nice.