Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Proud owner of a Chemo Spill Kit

Proud owner of a Chemo Spill Kit

Look! We are now the proud owners of a Chemo Spill Kit! Yippee!

You know I never thought that I would type the words "chemo spill kit" in the same sentence with the name of any of my family members but, oh yes, a historic day it is. And yes we, or I should say Abby is the owner of a lovely chemo spill kit complete with gown, gloves, bio-hazard bags and the like. You know at this point it just makes me laugh, and no it not a hysterical laugh, just more of a "this is our new life" kind of laugh.

Because of this kit and it's implications I decided to review everything deemed out of the ordinary that has happened to us since December...

Abby was DX with Leukemia, Weekly trips to Denver, 4 stays at the hospital, 5 surgeries/bone aspirations, 8-10 blood transfusions, weekly or more trips to CHOA, 1 retinal hemorrhage, patching and new glasses, bought a house and moved, finished my CSU course work and survey... Oh , also in the last month or 2 I have cut my finger/thumb on a saw, sprained my ankle, broke a mercury thermometer which got on my gold ring and made an amalgamate of it, 2 high dose Methotrexate infusions (both times she unplugged herself) and have had multiple appointments to keep us all fixed up.

That seemed like a bit when I put it all in short span so I decided to take the online stress test to see how stressed our family might/should be. I found one online and here are the results.

44 Change in family member's health
31 Mortgage or loan over $30,000
26 Starting or finishing school (CSU and I'm a teacher too... does that count as 2?)
23 Personal injury
20 Change in residence
19 Change in recreational habits
19 Change in church activities
18 Change in social activities
16 Change in sleeping habits

My total score was 197, I bet it is about the same for Tiffany and Abby... And Anna could probably care less. Her stress scale would have things like having to wait for her milk, being corrected, how many times she had to share and the like.

Maybe we should all go around and share our "numbers"... "Hi I'm Bill and I'm an 86 this week." "Nice to meet you Bill, my house just burned down, I'm and 202." Maybe that would be too weird.

Actually, things are going pretty good. Abby is doing OK, she's been a sick from a cold and the infusion probably didn't help much but she is in good spirits. Last night Tiffany took Abby down to Denver to the hospital because she might have an infection in her Broviac so they wanted to take a culture, look at her and start her on some antibiotics. Tiffany got back late last night after they started Abby on some antibiotics and did the culture.


More later