When we go to the hospital now, we go to the oncology clinic. There we check in just like at a regular doctors appointment. Odette gets her temperature and blood pressure taken and then they weigh her and see what her height is. I am so excited that Odette has finally reached 8.01kg, which is a little over 17 pounds! It only took her 9 months to go up from 7.44, but she finally did it! Maybe she will get to ride forward in her car seat before she is two.
Once this general stuff is all done, we are assigned a room and we go and wait...just like a regular doctors office, except we get to see more than just one doctor. No wonder the bills get so high. They may all be in the room at the same time or all staggered out. We usually first see the nurse who is really the one that does everything. She accesses Odette's port. This consists of some spray freeze stuff to numb the skin and a needle getting poked into her, then the needle is taped down and a dressing cover put over it. Odette screams the whole time, not necessarily because it hurts-it does hurt mind you, but a lot of the screaming is because she has to be held down and not move. Then the nurse takes a blood sample to run all sorts of tests on and then administers the chemo. The one we got today was Vincristine and it is just pushed in through her line in a couple of minutes.
Next we see the Nurse Practitioner. She/He listens to Odette, checks ears, nose and mouth. Then they will explain what procedures are being done for the day and check if we need prescription refills.
Lastly we see the Doctor. All they usually do is listen to Odette, say how cute and beautiful she is and say "See you next time." Why do they get paid so much?
While these three people are doing their job, we also get visits from the Child Life Specialist who brings toys to play with, the psychologist to make sure I'm still at the same level of crazy, the Nutritionist who makes sure I know how to feed Odette or help her improve on her feeding and almost every nurse will poke their head in just to get a smile and wave from Odette.
Today, we also had a trip to the RTU. I don't think I have ever written about this place in the hospital, even though we have been there several times. It is the "Rapid Treatment Unit". This is where we go to get our spinal taps/lumbar punctures (where they put three different chemo drugs in Odette's spinal fluids to make sure the cancer cells aren't able to survive there) and our Bone Marrow Aspirates (What they check to make sure that Odette has no signs of cancer cells in her bone marrow.). It is kind of like a mini surgery room. I get to take Odette back and they give her some sleepy medicine and once she is asleep I leave and they do their jobs. When she wakes up-today it was only about 20 minutes total-I go back and get her and we are able to go home. What a great day it ended up being. Odette came home happy and laughing! Now to keep her that way since we start the steroids this week as well!
It's nice to know "a day in the life" of you and Odette. The RTU is where Aaron worked when he worked at Primary Children's before we went to Med School. It's even better to know that you got to go home "healthy" and happy.
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