Blue Christmas

We are home. We survived Christmas. And we are exhausted.

It's been a crazy ride over the past two weeks. Emotionally, Kris and I are spent. There was too much reality in our last little hospital stay. We saw what the future holds if we stay in Victoria. The hospital staff are really nice and they aim to please, but they are nervous and clueless about oncology patients. We were warned about this at Children's, but it was a shock to have to tell the ER nurse "no" repeatedly to a rectal temperature check. No means no! By the end of our stay, I was itching to get out of there. In the pediatric ward, the nurses have four or five patients each (as opposed to two at Children's) and they all have viruses or some other scary bug. Definitely not cool for my immune compromised baby. The pediatrician agreed and got us out of there pretty quickly.

The days leading up to Christmas were sad. I got a letter from the government telling me my EI claim had been rejected. Apparently you can't piggy-back them? I didn't think my mat leave would interfere, but apparently it does. Kris and I shut ourselves in the house and tried to get in the spirit of things. We watched Christmas movies, listened to Christmas music and decorated every inch of our house. We put Eleanor in her gingerbread jammies and waited for the blues to lift. On Christmas eve we went in for blood work (a condition of our early discharge) which dampened the mood further, so when Eleanor pulled out her NG tube at 9:30 that night, we were ready to throw in the towel. Screw Christmas and the horse it rode in on. However, things started to look up when we were in and out of the hospital in ten minutes with minimal fussing. I couldn't believe our luck. Last time we had to do that, it took almost an hour.

Christmas morning was nice - Kris and I bought a few small things for each other, and Eleanor played happily with her bounty. We did a Christmas lunch over at my parents and had a lovely time. We enjoyed a rousing round of Yankee Swap, or Christmas Swiping, as the kids called it. I suppose it is not totally in the spirit of the holidays to steal presents from one another, but boy oh boy, was it ever funny! My mum had done a huge feast that everyone enjoyed, including Eleanor! We sat her up at the table and she ate everything! Turkey, potatos, celery in white sauce, turnips, salmon (for the pescatarian - me). It was like a Christmas miracle. Every other time I have fed her meat, she would throw up violently, and now she puts it back like her dad! She is now demanding food all the time, and her double chin is reemerging, but in a good way. This has lifted our spirits considerably, especially as we count down the hours til we return for round 6.

But wait! We're not going back tomorrow! In light of our impromptu ICU stay, we have requested to spend New Years at home. So we are now going back next Wednesday! I am quite excited about this extra little time. Eleanor is so much fun right now. She's babbling away (especially while eating; her manners are terrible!) and she's becoming really mobile. She's reaching and rolling with no problem, except for getting tangled in her NG tube. I keep hoping she'll pick herself up and start crawling, but she is still pretty weak for that. I just love who she is becoming. She's got so much more courage these days, it's hard to believe she was so sick just ten days ago. The happier she is, the better Kris and I are.

I hope you all had a lovely holiday season, and may all our New Years dreams come true!