December 3, 2005

Saturday has been snowy, quiet and uneventful. Today is the first day we can say that we have had no visitors. Alone time is not all bad, either. Leah has watched many, many videos and after Chris hooked up our DVD player from home, some of them as well. Every time we think her fever is subsiding, perhaps for the last time, it returns. This is frustrating to us, since they have assured us that she should not be this sick when she receives chemotherapy unless she has an infection that we must return to the hospital for.

Our lone source of entertainment today has been our nurse's assistant. His name is James Brown (poor guy) who lives on Woodstock Avenue. He has quite a good sense of humor and likes nothing better than to pass time talking with us. Our nurse finally started looking for him in our room when she needed him to do work. Leah finds him entertaining and has even cracked a smile for him. James and Chris have developed a project for our hospital stay: they will work to take Chris' blood pressure without him fainting. They made two attempts at this today that had to be aborted before the cuff had inflated all the way.

We also met another doctor. Dr. DePaola is probably our favorite doctor here in just the few minutes we got to visit with him today. Leah liked him, too, and we are happy he is here this weekend and will be the attending doctor for December. We still see Dr. Rahdi as our primary doctor, and while I do believe that he is quite competent and even kind, feel more comfortable with Dr. DePaola immediately upon meeting him.

The hospital is operating much more slowly on the weekends, which is fine with us. Today there was not the parade of doctors and residents coming to poke on Leah like there were during the week. They did manage to take a 12 hour urine catch to determine her creatinine levels. This is to develop a baseline of what those levels are normally so that when she begins chemotherapy they can watch her kidney function closely. As with any medicine, chemotherapy has side effects, and kidney function is something they will want to be watching, as is her hearing.

The urine catch has meant that Leah has actually had to get up to go to the bathroom. She is not very excited about this, and it is impossible to tell if it is because she is in pain, or worried about hurting her abdominal incision, or a number of other aspects of being here, such as having a big cart with cords and wires we have to drag into the bathroom with us. Being up is good for her, and we were trying to convince her to go for a walk with us, but now that her fever is coming back, don't think that will be happening yet tonight.

Sunday will be another day, and hopefully one that ends her discomfort and fever. We pray for this as well as for God to help heal Leah and restore her to health.