We are continuing to pound our way across this treatment terrain. Yesterday Dayssi had a spinal puncture to inject methotrexate and it was pretty uneventful. I am especially appreciative of just how uneventful having spent a week sharing a hospital room with an adorable 13-year old girl who gets methotrexate intravenously as an in-patient and then spends the entire night vomiting. Anyway, yesterday was kind of fun for Dayssi. Everyone in the surgical prep and recovery areas knows us and LOVES her. The nurses fight over who gets assigned to her and the anesthesiologist told me several times yesterday that he didn't want to put her to sleep so that he could spend more time playing with her!
Yesterday was our first time with a late afternoon procedure time and it was . . . different. There were a lot of teenagers with us in the prep and recovery areas. I think they might schedule the teens later because you have to fast all day before surgery, starting at midnight the night before, and it is really hard for the littler ones to go until 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon. We've been pretty lucky,usually pulling an early morning slot but yesterday we pulled a long straw (Dayssi did ok, she hardly complained and seemed satisfied to talk about all of the things she could eat after her "test").
Most of the teens were insolent, they were scared but not wanting to show it, either sullen and uncommunicative or complaining loudly about everything that was happening to them (rightfully so). But it kind of took the wind out of their sails to see Dayssi among them, perched up on her guerney, singing and giggling to herself, blowing kisses to the doctors and nurses, lining up her stuffed animals and finally shouting " c'mon guys, here we goooo!" and then waving graciously like she was on a parade float as the doctors wheeled her out to her procedure. The parents were laughing their heads off at the contrast, which seemed to irritate the teens even more.
The angst of teen life was so poignant in this context. There was a boy with braces, wearing a headband and a puka shell necklace (they took the necklace before surgery but let him keep the headband) trying so hard to look cool but clearly freaked out by the process of getting his IV line in (they were having hard time finding a good vein). He was cursing and grimacing, on occasion almost crying, barking angrily at his mom (whom he banished from his bedside but would not let leave the room) and his grandmother, whom he allowed to stay next to him. As an aside, these women looked almost exactly like the Laura Dern and Diane Ladd characters from David Lynch's Wild at Heart. But my favorite teen moment from yesterday was a line I overheard in the recovery room. A 16-year old girl was wheeled in after plastic surgery to fix a broken nose and she was talking a blue streak as her anesthesia was wearing off. Among the funny things she said was this priceless remark, delivered with a California-girl lilt: "I guess I should be wondering where my mom is right now but I really don't care."
Flu season is kicking in already and it is freaking me out. Dawn was out last week, Candy is out this week, and I have a serious bug right now -- low-grade fever, aches, and a cough, since Wednesday!! I am just terrified that Dayssi is going to catch it and the damn thing won't go away! I've been wearing a mask at home, washing my hands obsessively, hoping for the best. This is the last week of summer school for the girls (India's last week ever at BING!) so I'm hoping we'll escape without catching anything new there. We learned yesterday that in three weeks Dayssi will start "delayed intensification," which, as I understand it, is the last really intense period of chemotherapy before maintenance. She'll be getting daily injections, administered at home (yes, we have to do it ourselves), and her counts will crash, just in time for Jim and I to start our fall tandem teaching, when we will be totally unavailable all day every day for a week, while exposing ourselves to 240 fantastic new MBA students and their exotic germs from all over the world. No offense guys :-). The timing is just perfect.
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