Dylan is still in hospital, day 4. They detected that the bug in Dylan’s hickman line is sensitive to Vancomycin and stopped the Gentamicin and Timentin yesterday. Today they have changed the Vancomycin to another antibiotic that can be given once a day via his hickman line called Teicoplanin. They are hoping that the home hospital can arrange to see Dylan on Sunday so that we can go home tomorrow night. He is scheduled for his bone marrow aspirate on Tuesday provided his Neutrophils are up. Regardless, we have an appointment to see Dr Heath on Tuesday and have prepared a huge list of questions to try and conclude where we go from here.
On a better note, we would like to thank Wide Bay Australia, the building society in Queensland that our mortgage in through. They have amazingly agreed to our plea of halving our home loan repayments and they have done so for the next 12 months! Words cannot express the load that has been lifted off our shoulders knowing we can stay in our family home. We were faced with the heart breaking realization that we would have to sell our home after Xmas and try and find somewhere to live. Now we can concentrate on caring for Dylan and lifting that awful cloud that looms over him.
Yesterday Dylan was a TV star for the second time. He was on the “Macadamia Show” for one hour. This is a hospital channel, so Dylan was his cheeky, spunky self and we got it on video tape to take home. Dylan has a date with Huey the chef from TV on Thursday. As some of you will know, Dylan wants to be a chef when he grows up so Challenge has arranged for him to go to Huey’s restaurant, where he will cook for him personally. We also have the “challenge” Xmas party coming up next weekend and “Camp Quality” is getting us tickets for the Santa’s Kingdom show. We had Tony Shaw come and give all the kids on the ward a gift, again organized by “Challenge”. Dylan got the Matrix game for his X Box. If we get out tomorrow night then we will go to the “Make a Wish” Xmas party on Sunday. These charity groups are amazing and really do make life that little bit more special for kids living with cancer.
During our stay we have met three new families all diagnosed this week. Lachlan aged 4 with ALL (Leukemia) Oscar aged 3 with ALL and Jane aged 9 with Osteosarcoma. Jane has the same condition as Donna and in the exact same place, her left arm. I got a message from Rose today saying that they were on their way to Melbourne. I went down to emergency to see Donna and she had been transferred from Sale hospital as she started to bleed from her gastric peg. She was sent to 5 East along with four other cancer patients that we know as there are no beds on 6 East. There have been 8 newly diagnosed ALL (Leukemia) families in the past two weeks, so the ward is flat out!
