I woke up at eight thirty. I phoned Dr. W and they said they would give him the message. Dr. W phoned back at nine thirty. I told him I was concerned about Alex, the swelling hasn’t gone down yet and on Saturday the other side was swollen. He said he was going to phone the hospital and wanted me to phone five minutes later. Dr. W said he wanted the hospital to explain what chemotherapy can do to a patients glands.
I phoned the hospital and they said to come in at one o’clock. I asked them if we could come at three o’clock instead. Joan checked and said that was okay.
I had a shower and got dressed. Alex and I went to the bank and McDonald’s. We came home and had lunch.
We took Kurt to gym class, they had “friend day” today. There was about twenty kids there. The parents were told to stay and supervise their child and his or her friend. It sure was exhausting following Alex and Kurt around. They didn’t stay on anything for very long. The last twenty minutes the instructors made up games for the kids to do.
We took Kurt home, Nora invited us in but I told her I had to take Alex to the hospital. Nora said I hope it’s nothing serious. I told her my doctor thought it was from Chemotherapy.
We went to the hospital and got there before three o’clock. Alex and I played some games while we waited. We saw Dr. R, I told him all Alex’s symptoms. Dr. R said Alex had the mumps, but he said they would do a test to confirm it. I asked Dr. R if Alex could be around other children. He said Alex couldn’t be around his kids but other kids would be okay. He told us to wait in the room for the tests. Mary did a blood test and Heather took a throat swab.
Heather asked us to go out the back door so we wouldn’t infect anyone.
We went to Mom and Dad’s, Mom had invited us over. We had dinner then Mom and Dad watched the hockey game on TV.
Alex said he didn’t want me to leave him while I went to the Candlelighters meeting. It’s a support group for parents of Cancer patients.
Alex said he was really tired and wanted to lie down. I put him into Mom and Dad’s bed. Alex asked me to lie down with him. Alex fell asleep and about fifteen minutes later I left for the meeting.
When I got to the meeting there were three people there. The chairperson, her husband and another woman. The chairperson introduced herself and the other woman. They asked me who my child was and what type of Cancer he had. Both of their children had ALL and were about the same age as Alex. They said their kids were on radiation which surprised me. The other woman said her son was a high risk patient. The chairperson’s daughter had been given a double dose of Methotrexiate by the hospital.
Once the meeting got started we had to tell who we were, how many children we had, what our child had, and how they were doing. I do terrible in front of more than four people, so I had a hard time. I was the second person to speak and I got quite emotional. I cut my intro quite short but if I had carried on I know I would of broken down.
One of the women broke down and cried when she talked about her son. She has twin boys, one of the boys has a tumour around his pelvis and they were unable to operate. That’s all she could say.
I felt really badly for her it’s very hard talking to people about a sick child.
After everyone had done their intro, the chairperson told us some of the things they planned to do.
She explained that Candlelighters isn’t from the hospital. The hospital group would be having a meeting on June 21st. The group then decided to have their next meeting a week after the hospital.
The meeting finished before ten o’clock and I went to get Alex.
Mom had made me some tea and cake when I got back. Mom seemed quite anxious to hear about the meeting. I told her all about it. Then Alex woke up and we went home.
On the way home Alex asked why I hadn’t gone to the meeting. I told him I had gone. Alex was really surprised I had gone. He said I didn’t see you go. I said that’s because you were asleep.
When we got home we both went to bed. It was about eleven thirty by then.
Tests N/A
Medicine
Mercaptopurine ------ ------ 7:00 p.m.
Temperature 35.43C 9:00 a.m.
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