Z in June of 2003

So Z gets out of the hospital. He gets a tube in his chest. The technical name is broviak tube. Who is Broviak and why is this tube named after him. This allows for blood draws and chemo therapy. Quite a concept. Blood is pulled out and chemo pushed in. The first time I went to the infusion it was interesting. They have the room made up like a play room. There are 6 little infusion areas. These are like dentist chairs or hospital rooms with curtains you pull back for privacy. No one does since its never that crowded and it would be very clostraphobic being enclosed like that. There lots of toys. A computer. Two low tables for arts and crafts. There is an office and a medicine corner. Z likes to pull all the pills, tubes, gloves out of the medicine corner. He gets the look down apon treatment. He has all his hair and causes a mess. They aren't very nice. In the other part of the cancer unit he is weighed and measured every week. They check blood pressure and heart too. This is a bit much for the two year old. Every other Thursday he gets chemo and the other Thursday he gets a checkup with no chemo. So we see Dr Mody every week for 18 weeks. My wife really hates him. He tells us this is baby chemo and he has a hundred other patients all ready to drop dead at any moment. Every other treatment is venchristine and another treatment every 3 or 4 weeks also. He never gets sick. His hair doesn't fall out.

Wow I've been typing for 10 minutes now.

He gets chest xrays, ultrasounds and ct scans. He gets looked at from both a urological and oncological view point very often. How about support. Every Friday someone from my older daughter's school gives us a free meal. Either we pick up. They drop it off. Or they invite us over for dinner. Sometimes they cancel its ok. One cancelled and rescheduled a fantastic Shabbat dinner at their house in late fall of 2003. I even went to services the next morning. It was incredible, UM was playing Ohio State. Traffic was terrible and I had all three kids. Simchat Torah was his first public exposure. This was a month later. Another family who invited us over on a Saturday night. Every Thursday night someone from the pres-school where both girls went makes a meal. Sometimes the food isn't good. We don't tell them, its the thought that counts. We usually got no pig, no cheese. He was being isolated because his immune system is compromised from the chemo. After being isolated he is susceptible to germs since his immune system is not as experienced to the germs. Kinda complicated. He got real sick after family day at Simchat Torah. He ran around like a crazy two year old and looked perfectly normal.

Well I gotta run to my other job now.