Rene and I just took a quick long-weekend trip to Washington to visit family.  Rene had a great time seeing his aunt, uncle, and grandfather. He also loves to play with his aunt and uncle's malamute.  The two get along very well. Rene is generous with long, gentle belly rubs and also likes to play tug of war and racing loud monster trucks around, which the dog thinks is really exciting!

Rene thinks that visiting Grandpa means junk food galore and it made me feel bad to say no, so I let him eat white flour pancakes with syrup, sausage, have hamburgers on white flour buns, eat chips, roast marshmellows, and eat chocolate cake all in one day.  Of course, the salad that was available didn't look very yummy next to all the other options, so Rene had none of that. Yeah... well he threw up a lot the next day. I must come up with a new plan for visits to family!!!  Must I be the "bad guy?"  7-year-olds are not very understanding about things being for their own good.

It served me as a warning. Rene didn't get a fever but I took the oportunity to call the Seattle Children's hospital and figure out where I should take him if he ever does get sick on a visit. 

Rene's Grandpa was thrilled to have him visit and rolled out the welcome mat hosting a delicious barbeque and we got to see some extended family who made the extra effort to come eat with us on last minute notice. 

It was a great visit, except for the barfing. 

Rene has been taking his latest chemo for a month now and the dose seems to be fine. His neutrophil counts are staying up enough for him to maintain immune function. 

About a week and a half after returning from Mexico Rene started looking exhausted. He got a fever from another flu!  Luis was poised and ready for action.  He was savvy and since it was mid-week, he worked together with the children's oncology clinic at Vic General. Rene was able to get the required doses of I.V. antibiotics at Clinic and he never had to stay the night in the hospital. No bacteria grew in the cultures, so even though the type of virus Rene had couldn't be identified, it had to have been some kind of flu.

Despite the fact that his neutrophil counts went down a lot (they were used up fighting the virus) Rene and his counts bounced right back up -- that means that the dose of chemo isn't too large for Rene. This one is the metronomic dose and it's not supposed to kill too much bone marrow.

Soon after that I started getting a sore throat. I had this feeling: I was next.

Well, little did I know, but the flu I got (likely from Rene, but who knows) was going to be the worst I've had in years. There were a number of times when I did self-assessments to decide if I needed to go to the ER! I managed to keep myself hydrated and coherent, so I made it through without running that gauntlet. I missed almost all Easter weekend activities, then I missed an entire week of work, then I missed all of last weekend's activities (even seeing some lovely friends from Vancouver when they visited the island with their precious BABY!)

On Easter Monday Luis had to work. I had to cancel our Easter dinner with friends, which we were to host at our house.  I was so sick in fact, that I let Rene watch over 6 hours of TV! I laid under a blanket (if I got up, I shivered) with my feet tucked under Rene to keep warm and we watched hours and hours of Busy Town Mysteries.  I managed to make us lunch and that was it. I was so grateful when one of our friends, who was in town partly to come to Easter dinner with us called and offered to take Rene to the park to play. I'm so glad she thought of it. I couldn't let her come to our house in case she might get sick, but Rene deserved to get out and have some fun and get to see her.  Luis came home an hour later, and stopped to play with them. Rene ended up having a great afternoon. 

Luckily, Luis has been able to keep up the pace. He's been feeding Rene and I, grocery shopping, and doing laundry while I do my best to rest. I've been back and forth between the couch and bed.  In the evenings I try to wake up enough to connect with Rene, which has gone ok.

Thanks to Luis, Rene was able to participate in an Easter Egg hunt, see friends -- including the BABY, and generally do everything he's been looking forward to. 

Last weekend I managed to stand in line at the baseball park and get Rene signed up for Mini Minors. I managed not to groan in discomfort as I waited my turn in the busy room.  This I did because the other day in the car Rene, who had noticed that Luis and I hadn't put signing him up for baseball quite as high on the priority list of taxes, other major paperwork, swimming lessons, medical appointments for him, etc, said: "I would really like to play baseball again this year."

I kid you not. The sentence was that complete and perfectly enunciated.  So, I got him signed up and then crawled back home (Luis and Rene were watching a special screening of The Croods put on by Starlight Foundation for children with critical illnesses and their families.  Yes, I missed that too!)

After getting a secondary infection, requiring antibiotics, I am almost ready to go back to work. Tomorrow, I hope!!!! There is work to be done and I'm sure my team of co-workers is sick of me being sick!

Luis took Rene to his blood work again yesterday and Rene's neutrophils are up, so the next month of chemo was sent home with him.  Rene had his blood work done in his arm, rather than being "accessed" through his port (VAD, catheter in his chest) so he could start his next unit of swimming lessons last night.  Good thing he thinks pokes in the arm are "easy peasy."

In case you are wondering, the chemo is a simple process. Rene has to take a tiny, flavourless pill every morning after breakfast. This is about the easiest thing he's had to do for his treatment.