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2/14/06

9:20 PM: Happy Valentine's Day! (Or "Valentimes" as Sophie calls it). It's been a long but satisfying day. I got up at 4:30 this morning, so Sophie and I could hit the road by 5:45 (which we did). We were 4th or 5th in line for check-in at 7:15, but the nurse who does Sophie's vitals moved us up in the queue (mostly because Sophie looked so tired and clingy). That was nice, because she was third in line for sedation, and they took her in right before 8:00. I tried to prepare her, but because it went so well last time, I forgot I needed to talk to her about it until we were on the way there. She started to get upset, but I asked her if she wanted me to put the blanket over her head. That did the trick. It took her quite a while to wake up (at least 15 minutes, but I wasn't watching the clock). When she finally did wake up, she was completely loopy--she could hardly get words out and she sounded really drunk. It was hilarious to watch her try to eat cheese grits. I started to feed her a spoonful, but she insisted on doing it herself and lifted the bowl to her mouth like she was going to drink the grits (they were too thick for that to work). I ended up helping her, but as long as her hand was on the spoon and making the motions, she thought she was doing it herself, so that was okay. After she recovered, we had to wait a little while for her blood chemistries to come back before they could administer her second chemo (vincristine). Everything looked fine, including her counts (which weren't the least bit low, despite her earlier insistence). They will bump up one of her medicines a little bit (but not too much because they want her to be in good shape for our trip next week). She'll have a blood test here at home in two weeks to see if they can increase the dosage some more then.

Elisabeth wrote a poem last night for the Tooth Fairy:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I lost my tooth
And I gave it to you

The tooth fairy (who was a little more on the ball last night than before) wrote back:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Thanks for the tooth
Here's two dollars for you

Elisabeth noticed that the tooth fairy must have run out of paper because she used a post-it note from my desk. Randall told her that using paper and pens from people's houses makes a lot of sense so that she doesn't have to carry so much around.