Waking up at home!

Saturday morning, the first morning in nearly two weeks we woke up at home in our own bed.  How amazing was that?  No hospital smell, no hospital noises.  I could wander round in my pj's without having the worry that I was going to scare someone!  It was amazing to have a cup of tea without having to pay for it.  For the first few seconds when i woke it was like everything was back to normal and everything was good in our world.  When reality it it was different though.  I remembered what had changed in our life.

Billy had slept quite well, he had woken a couple of times, think we were both used to being woken in the night for obs.  As soon as he woke he was starving, and I mean starving.  The steroids were doing their thing.  He had a boiled egg and soldiers, milk, ham and more toast.  Within an hour or so he was hungry again so he had a muesli bar.

As it was the weekend Billy had to have antibiotics as well as steroids.  Every weekend right throughout his treatment Billy will have antibiotics called septrin.  He is given this to prevent an infection that children on chemo are prone to.  He told me this medicine was quite nice and tasted like banana milkshake.  To this day that nickname has stuck and we call in the banana milkshake medicine. It felt weird going the medicines but Billy was taking them easily and I seemed to be getting the hang of them.

We had a lot of changes to routine to get used to, his port site had to be checked and made sure it was clean and he had to take care with it for a while.  Although we were due back to hospital next week it was still really scary in case something went wrong.  I was so apprehensive things would go wrong I was a bit of a nervous wreck.

My friend Debbie came round to see us and see how we were settling in.  She was just what I needed, she caught me up on some of the gossip I had missed and she brought some treats in for Billy so he was made to feel special!  He loved having people round to see him and was telling them all how pleased he was to be home.

It was noticeable how the steroids were affecting Billy.  He was changing a lot, the weight was starting to go on as his appetite was growing.  It was so hard to buy food as his tastes were changing.  He had started to become cross quite easily and would get very emotional about the silliest of things.  He had always been happy so it wasn't nice to see.

I had all kinds of mixed emotions, I was pleased to be home and I could now see that the treatments were doing something to him.  On the flip side I was worried, it even used to cross my head that was I doing the right thing for him?  I knew I was but it is hard to watch your child going through injections, IV drugs, anaesthetics and other things.  It is heartbreaking to watch and comprehend that the only way they will get better it to go through some pain and a lot of discomfort.  Your first instinct as a parent is to protect them and stop them hurting but in this case all you can do is watch. 

One of the good things being at home was if i did want a cry it was easier to do it so Billy couldn't see.  I could hide away in my room, cry in the shower or other things.  I know that things were going to be hard but I knew we had it in us to beat this.  We had gotten through other bad things that had happened and I knew we could fight....