Yes it has been an exciting week and to be honest, by now I think I might have had enough of those! Anyhow, Luka sits next to me in hospital, watching a movie on the ipad, commenting everything that is going on in the movie (even I saw it 10 x before ;)) so nothing really to complain about.
Lets wrap the last days up:
We spent a wonderful day out in Legoland last Thursday and Karsten and I are really happy we did this. Definitely a day to remember, the boys had such fun and even though we almost missed most of the German football game that evening we at least decided deliberately to do so for the best reason in the world !
On Monday we completed the first cycle of chemotherapy and now do have 2 weeks ‚off‘. Unfortunately -but as expected- Luka’s counts dropped significantly due to chemo… So by Monday evening we knew he needed blood transfusions. Luckily the docs saw the urge for us to watch the next football game that evening at home instead of waiting hours for the bloods to arrive 😉 So we managed to be at home Monday evening with the promise to be back Tuesday morning in hospital for platelet transfusions (Thrombozyten fuer die Blutgerinnung). By the time we arrived at home Monday evening Luka’s cheeks were bright red and he was shivering. We thought he might spike a temperature (Wir dachten er bekommt Fieber). Doublechecking with hospital we were able to stay that night at home because his temp was fine. With regard to the game we should rather have stayed in hospital 😉 !
After the platelet transfusion on Tuesday afternoon Luka decided that he finally needs his sleepover at Benni’s and since he felt good and we knew his counts had just been boosted, we let him go 😉 He had again a wonderful time and I picked him up from school Wednesday. Wednesday afternoon he was invited to a farewell party and he had lots of fun with his whole class at Pizza express. I had problems dragging him out !!!
So up to then it actually had been exciting enough for me….but not for Luka ! Yesterday evening he came down with a terrible headache and finally a temperature. I had to take him to hospital shortly before midnight and the whole procedure started…Just to explain: under chemo blood counts will drop, so will the immune system. A temperature indicates an infection. With a suppressed immune system this could be fatal. So that’s why we have to head for hospital whenever Luka spikes a temperature. They take bloods for blood cultures, fever is being monitored and controlled and he is on antibiotics until they find out what causes the temperature. So our night was quite short but with pain relief and IV fluids and and and…we managed to catch some sleep eventually. Today Luka is feeling much better and his blood counts rather indicate it must have been a virus he caught at school (unless proven wrong by his blood cultures). So if everything runs smoothly…and as the docs know Germany is playing again tomorrow 😉 …we might get discharged tomorrow morning if Luka is stable over night. Then we wait on how he will react the next days and if he recovers well enough from Monday’s chemo to continue chemo in Frankfurt in 11 days we will finally be able to move back to Germany in 9 days. Just to complete the picture …while we are doing our hospital trips we still have a few other kids to take care of and we still are moving in about 9 days back to Germany… exciting enough ;))) ???
Find enclosed some pictures…They will reveal a different story…