A Life Less Ordinary

Most kids Caitlin's age would be getting excited around this time about having the Easter holidays off school. Unfortunately Caitlin hasn't been to school since December so every day feels like a holiday!!! Well, not quite. The point I'm making is that since we discovered Caitlin has Leukeamia back in January (there's no way its only been 4 months, it feels like an eternity) her life has taken a path no normal child will experience. Normal seems a funny word these days, everyday things for us that we now take for granted like feeding tubes, or cytotoxic chemo, will never be discussed at a "normal" dinner table. It's become the norm for us to administer chemo, or set up overnight feeds, or look at blood counts & work out how Caitlin's doing. I do wonder sometimes if a part of her childhood is being robbed from her, but I have to remind myself that this isn't always going to be like this, & she'll be chasing boys in no time (& so will I... with a bat if they come near my little girl)

Which brings me to the present, I'm sitting in Ipswich Hospital with Caitlin asleep in a bed next to me having a blood transfusion. She had her chemo yesterday at home as well as a finger prick to take a blood sample. When the sample was analyzed, her haemoglobin levels were flagged up as really low. As she was having her Hickman line in on Wednesday they wouldn't be able to do the op with those levels so low. The danger aspect would be through the roof so they arranged for her to have a transfusion in preparation for the op.

Unfortunately, that night Caitlin was sick. She hadn't had anything major to eat so there wasn't much to come up, except her NG tube, which was going in through her nose & now hanging out of her mouth. We cut it out & prepared for the hospital, as without the NG tube, Caitlin wouldn't be eating anything at all. A phone call later & we were there. We'd prepared for an overnight stay but we were lucky, a check over, a new tube & some antibiotics to stop what looked like the really early stages of tonsilitus & we were home.

The next morning Nanny Jane had brought Caitlin's Aunty Skye down as she was staying with us for a while, after a quick play with the new sticker books that she loves doing we headed to the hospital & that brings me to now: watching a bag of blood slowly ease its way into Caitlin. It's a long process of about 4 hours so I'll leave it there for now.

Tomorrow is Addenbrookes, & I'll update again then.

XxX