Summer Starts with a BANG!

196 Days to Go

Just so you know what a caring, fun-loving, entertaining kind of Mom I can be, let’s re-cap the schedule and activities I have arranged for the children this past week:

Thursday night: Swimming and dinner at a friend’s house, complete with trampoline time (Heaven on Earth, as far as they are concerned.) chicken nuggets, and watermelon. Really, does it get any better?

Friday: Final day of the school year; complete with requisite end-of-year partying and frenzy. (Which for mom, entails making two dozen cupcakes for one class; buying and providing ice cream and topping supplies for sundaes for another class; cold hard cash for the third and final class to pay for party supplies; trying to help with three parties being held at the same time in different classrooms; four end-of-the-year teacher gifts; one end-of-the-year nurses gift; and one end-of-the-year Pre-K Resource coordinator gift …. No wonder the parents are as tired as the kids are on the last day of school!)

Friday night: Dinner with friends and an evening at the movies --- Madagascar, complete with soda pop and smuggled M&Ms.

Later Friday night: Receive phone call from parent of Pre-K classmate of Kendrie’s, explaining classmate has been diagnosed with chicken pox after spending two days since breaking out (with what the parents thought were ant bites) in close proximity to Kendrie. (Wow, that’s a really bad run-on sentence, isn’t it?) Luckily, the late-night phone call to the oncologist reveals Kendrie’s chicken pox titers still show “good”, or “immune”, or whatever, so we don’t have to do anything. Whew! I would hate to start the summer off with an illness or medical stuff! (Ominous last words ………………..)

Saturday: Neighborhood cook-out (at Kendrie’s boyfriend Nicholas’ house), complete with playing in the sprinklers, picnic-ing outside, birthday cake and grab bags.

Sunday: Birthday party for our friend Jacob, complete with a moonwalk and swimming. Realize half-way through party that I didn’t think to ask oncologist if it was OK for Kendrie to be around other kids ….

Monday: Have plans to take the kids fishing, but weather is gloomy so we postpone; spend the rest of the day listening to kids complain, loudly, that they NEVER get to do anything fun. Kendrie starts coughing; assume it is a rebellious plot since she’s really mad about the fishing.

Tuesday: Begins raining; Kendrie still coughing; take kids to go bowling with friends since it’s an indoor activity. Kellen has a ball game that evening, but Kendrie’s cough is starting to sound worse so keep her home and out of the drizzle; listen to her fuss about not being allowed to go.

Tuesday night: Cough is bad enough that Kristie gets up in the middle of the night to give medicine (hey, you *know* it’s bad if I get out of the bed and everything!)

Wednesday: Have plans to go swimming with friends, but it’s still raining. LOTS of tv time today. Kellen doesn’t get out of his pajamas all day. Suddenly, our fun-and-activity-filled summer is looking bleak. Will the rain ever stop??? Decide to take Kendrie to the doctor for cough, which continues to worsen.

Which brings us to this afternoon: Can you believe her lungs sounded gunky enough to warrant a chest x-ray, which showed “pre-possible-maybe-early-pre-pneumonia” ??? So, ok, a course of antibiotics is not too much trouble. But now, as I type this, she is laying in my bed, coughing her head off, and running a slight fever.

I *thought* the chicken pox exposure was a wee bit of a scare …. I *thought* the non-stop rain, forecasted for the next ten days, was kind of a nuisance. But I’m making public my stance that I DO NOT WANT TO SPEND THE FIRST WEEK OF SUMMER VACATION IN THE HOSPITAL WITH A CHILD WITH PNEUMONIA!!! Kids with ports usually get a free pass to the ER if their temperature goes above 101. Hers isn’t that high yet and I’m saying a prayer tonight that it stays at 100, which is where it is now. We haven’t had to go to the ER for an unexpected fever one single time since this whole leukemia thing started … and that's a track record I'd prefer to KEEP, if that's ok.

I promise not to complain about the rain anymore ….. I promise not to gripe about our plans for swimming and playing at parks and bike riding that keep getting messed up …. Just please, please, please, please let the antibiotic kick in so she starts to feel better! I won’t even gripe if I have to watch “The Buttercream Gang” one more time! Shoot, Kellen can stay in his pajamas AGAIN, just let her start feeling better soon!

Thanks for checking in on us,
Kristie
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KENDRIE'S PERSPECTIVE:

WORST THING ABOUT HAVING CANCER TODAY: You name it, I feel it. Coughy, wheezy, (hey, aren't those two of the dwarfs???) my head hurts, the medicine is upsetting my tummy, which is causing a distinctly unpleasant occurrence in the restroom ... ugh. Is it some kind of bug??? This is NOT how I want to start my summer!

BEST THING ABOUT HAVING CANCER TODAY: Well, I have to admit that it was pretty cool when they did that chest x-ray and you could see the big ole' round thing on the picture that shows where my port-o-cath is located in my chest! My doctor printed out a copy for me to bring home and I think it looks neat!