Hasta la vista Hotel El Camino!

Callum's Hour 48 methotrexate levels just barely made it for clearance (it was at 0.19, needs to be less than 0.20), but we'll take it!! :)

Logan and my Dad hung out with us all day, which made the time pass by super quick, and also came in handy when we got an early discharge at 6pm, since they were able to take us home!

We are all settling back into the house, happy to be back home again. Can't wait to start off our summer right tomorrow!

Round 3!

We got up at the crack of dawn again today for Callum's lumbar and IV procedure (with admission). If you're keeping track, this is number three of six total admissions during this phase. Halfway there! We're getting to be old pros by now!

Callum was taken by surprise, a bit more than previous procedures, when the anesthesia hit him. He actually grabbed his head/ears the minute the med hit - I'm assuming it was the woozy knock out feeling that bugged him. But, he did fine otherwise and woke up squirmy and chatty and wanting to play his iPad games as usual.

Our ambulance ride was a breeze. We had the same team as last time and the gal who rode in the back with us, remembered us (well, I might add!), so we just caught up on life since our last trip. :)

We are now settled in at "Hotel El Camino". Our room is next door to the room we had for the last two visits, so I'm a little turned around since everything is laid out in a mirror image from what I'm used to ;-) But otherwise settling in nicely and have just begun the 24 hour methotrexate IV.

I told our child life specialist that Callum really enjoyed water coloring last visit, so she stepped it up a notch, with tempura paints and an easel to work from, this time around. Boy, did he jump out of his bed to try it out right away!

Scheduling Tetris

Before I blog about my subject title, let me just take a moment to giggle at my adorable kid and his kissable chunky cheeks!

I had to send a recent pic of him to the hospital for a(nother) program I applied for, and he posed a few cheesy smiles for me while I snapped away. As you can see, he's still got his steroid cheeks but they are now looking much more like his "before" state - I'm seeing less of his double chin these days and his dimples are much easier to make out. :)

The last pic is just to show a typical haul from the pet store to feed our furry zoo. Four huge bags of dog food and four small bags of cat food (plus a cat toy that Callum picked out). We buy LOTS of pet food A LOT of the time. Phew!

As for my "Scheduling Tetris" topic, this week is going to be particularly crazy. I've got several folks helping out to juggle our "life" and actually started writing it down so I wouldn't forget it all. Then, I decided I'd show you, my dear readers, a quick glimpse into this week's juggling act.

What makes it so crazy? Callum (and I) will be admitted to the hospital this week. Jon is traveling a few of those days. And Logan's Kindergarten graduation is also happening! Yikes!

So here's what we're going to do....

On Monday - my dad will take Callum and I to the hospital while Jon takes Logan to school in the morning.
Kim will pick Logan up from school, and Jon will pick him up from Kim's house when he gets home after work.

On Tuesday - Jon will take Logan to school and then catch his flight. My dad will pick Logan up from school, where he'll spend the night. And Kim will pick up the dogs!

On Wednesday - my Mom will take Logan to school while my Dad will meet me at the hospital to swap and watch Callum so I can then make it to Logan's graduation! And if we're lucky, Callum will get discharged, but if not, then we'll stay another night (and Logan will stay with my parents again). Depending on when we get home (Wed or Thurs), Kim will drop the dogs back off at home too.

Are you exhausted yet? Because I am, and we haven't even started the week yet! Wish us luck. :)

Another study

*** I just discovered this still sitting in my drafts folder! Should've posted it last week! ***


One of the things about seeing doctors up at Stanford is that you're asked to participate in a bunch of studies, all of which we've gladly said yes to. We figure parents participating before us have only helped our situation, so it's the least we can do to help others after us.

Anyway, one study is being conducted by UC Berkeley, to see if there are any environmental or genetic connections to leukemia (to date, causes of leukemia are still unknown). So, I sat through a pretty detailed and lengthy phone interview a week or two ago, where they asked me crazy questions like, did you have the flu or a cold 3 months before you were pregnant with Callum? Did you have the flu or a cold during your pregnancy with Callum? From Callum's birth to March 12, 2014, did he have any X-rays of any kind? (And then when you answer yes, they go through a detailed series of questions on the types of X-rays across his entire body). Throughout the entire interview I kept thinking man, thank goodness he's only 4 years old. I would have a lot more "I don't know" answers if he was any older! ;-)

So the second part of the study is collection of both mine and Callum's saliva, to run DNA/genetic tests I guess. So he and I had fun spitting into a little vial this afternoon, and now our spit is in a red "WARNING! BIOHAZARD!" bag, bring shipped back to their labs for study. :)

(TMI, but dang it's hard to come up with enough spit for their seemingly tiny little kits!! I can't imagine any kid younger than Callum would be able to do that.) :(

More proof I have boys

When I left this morning to meet up with some girlfriends (for brunch and a movie - fun!), the boys were playing video games.

When I got back, they were playing video games. Same room, practically the same seating position.

Not even sure they connected that I had been gone. ;-)

Ahhhh, to be a mother of boys.

Pool Party!

We headed to the Jodoin's house this afternoon to hang out with a bunch of friends, enjoy their pool and lots of delicious foods! :)

Both Logan and Callum had a blast in the water (which was fantastic to see, since they often times get really nervous and anxious being around the water).

Robot Zombie with Laser Eyes

Yesterday was a big day! After dropping Logan off at school, Callum and I headed up to the hospital for his weekly blood check. Since he was neutropenic last week, I was expecting the same. But hopeful that maybe his counts had risen enough to get him out of the neutropenic state - mostly because it would relax our "lock down" status but also because yesterday's results would tell us whether we'd make his next hospital admission (Monday) or need to delay. And, as much as possible, I'm hoping we don't delay anything with his treatments.

Anyway, after a LONG time of waiting, we finally got the ALL CLEAR! I was surprised but so happy to hear it. It meant we could head over for a play date with the Cables family after the hospital visit (something I had tentatively planned with Jill but hadn't told Callum - just in case). And it also meant we were all clear for his LP and high dose methotrexate (with hospital admission) on Monday. Yay!!

So after we finally left the hospital, it was close to lunchtime and we were pretty hungry. Jill ran out to grab donuts but Callum was also in the mood for bagels so we stopped to grab some of those as well.

Callum hasn't had too many play dates so this was pretty exciting for him. Plus, ever since we had seen the Cables over Easter, he had been asking to visit them at their house. :) The kids had a blast playing together. I tried to capture a couple of pics of them running after each other around the house but my slow phone camera is no match for those rambunctious kids! Jill reminded me I could've grabbed a video. Darn. Oh well.

The first pic is of Callum acting out as (he announced) a Robot Zombie with Laser Eyes. He would chase Trent (Amelia joined later) around the house as "the bad guy" while they all laughed and squealed with glee. The second one is my very slow snap of them running past me. ;-)

After a fun afternoon we finally parted ways, since we needed to get back home in time to pick up Logan from school (barely making it, since I had forgotten about rush hour traffic - ha!). Logan's school had an "exhibition night" (what we used to call Open House I think?) where each class could show off to their parents what they've been learning about. So the kids sung a couple of songs about mammals and then answered a bunch of questions from their parents (given to us in hand outs). ;-) Logan enjoyed this quite a bit but mostly he liked showing Callum his classroom and introducing him to his friends. :)

Soon the boys got bored of the class, so we headed outside and they played with a few other kids on one of the smaller playgrounds. I was so happy to have them out and playing and having fun that we stayed quite late, which meant Callum was exhausted and couldn't walk (sometimes he has bone pain from the leukemia, that bothers him). So I had to carry him on my back, a very long walk back to our car, but I didn't really care.

What a great day!