Day +47: Ah,Yes. It Must Be a Monday

As predicted Keith spent most of the day across the street shuffling between Packard and the Stanford Medical Center. The first stop was a visit to the clinic for his twice-weekly physical exam and lab draw. Then it was upstairs to attend the school on the third floor. As Josie and Keith approached the classroom they noticed a sign on the door that read “Quiet, Test in Progress.” But before they could about face and escape, Keith’s teacher noticed them and escorted Keith into the room whereupon he was given a pencil, shown to a desk and handed the standardized statewide Star Test. He managed to somehow get through it even with the added burden of having to wear his not-so-comfortable, hard-to-breathe-in, pink-hued respirator the whole time.

Then it was back to RM House for a quick lunch and a little mask-free time quickly followed by a return trip back to the hospital for his scheduled radiation treatment. Keith sailed through the treatment but his lab results indicated that he did indeed need more platelets, so they both hung around in the hallway for about an hour waiting for a bed in the day hospital to free up. Still wearing his mask, Keith started to feel a bit queasy and it was soon after finally being led into the day hospital room that Keith’s stomach let loose. He had a similar episode on Friday shortly after that radiation treatment, so we are beginning to wonder if his reaction is correlated to the radiation or a mere coincidence. A dose of Benedryl and an Ativan settled his stomach but it took about four hours to complete his infusions of platelets and GCSF. Josie and Keith left the day hospital around 7pm, exhausted as you might expect.

Ah, yes. It must be a Monday.