"I Quit"

Trip has had it. Day 3 of hospitalization and he is so ready to go home. Other than his disease he is a healthy, energetic little boy and being confined to a hospital room with the occasional visit to the playroom is hard on him. Treatment was delayed 4 hours on Thursday due to a communication breakdown between the nurses and our doctors that could have easily been avoided. We could possibly be at home right now if that hadn’t occurred but it is what it is.

Trip’s attitude slowly started deteriorating this afternoon because he feels a little crummy from the chemo and he wants out of here. A small task of taking medicine or getting changed for bed resulted in a fit. There was some hitting, yelling, and a few raspberries in my face. He said time and time again, “I quit. I’m going to break this hospital.” He even attempted to unhook himself from the pump. My consoling only made it worse.

At this point in our journey I thought I had mastered patience… waiting hours on doctors to show up, waiting days for test results, waiting weeks to know if treatment is working, waiting, waiting, waiting. Trip has been such a trooper during this ordeal that I realized I have patience as long as he is comfortable and happy. I started to get anxious and impatient this afternoon, which didn’t help him any.

I’m still trying to figure out my lesson today. I want to say it should be to find a way to be the patient adult Trip needs me to be at all times, but my guess is that’s a pipedream. Maybe with a little more practice. Patience truly is a virtue. Virtue schmirtue.

Trip has shared his plan with all the nurses and a couple of doctors: tonight while he is sleeping, his nurse will “get his blood out” (which means they will test the methotrexate level), then unhook him from the machines, then when Mr. Sun comes up he will be de-accessed, then he’s “outta here”. I hope it works that way for him (us) since there is that slim chance he might not clear the methotrexate that fast. I’ll be putting in a special request tonight to The Man Upstairs.