Everyone has these weeks – not necessarily quite like ours, but the kind of week that leaves you at the end of it numbly slumped on the couch gasping for air looking across the room at your significant other and mumbling ‘what the hell just happened’.
It started as so many weeks do with a Monday, Jenny’s 3rd birthday in fact. Phil spent the preceding Friday, Saturday and Sunday in Canberra with the team from Tea Tree Gully competing at the National Disaster Rescue Challenge. (They came 2nd, go team!) They were supposed to catch a very early flight – LANDING in Adelaide at 7.20am. The first fly in the jam was the taxi company turning up 35 minutes late resulting in everyone missing their flight by 3 minutes. They rebooked on the next flight home, unfortunately it not a direct flight, it was via Sydney. Sydney that day was experiencing fog, delaying flights both in and out.
The problem that this gave us was that this particular Monday morning Alex was due in DOSA (Day of surgery admissions) at the womens and childrens hospital at 7am to get grommets put in. The plan was for Phil to come to the hospital and look after Jenny while I looked after Alex post anesthesia.
Well you know what happens to best laid plans…
After they knew they were going to miss the flight – which itself ended up being delayed – one of our most wonderful friends got a 5am panicked phone call along the lines of ‘please please please could you look after Jenny this morning’. Telly was utterly amazing and did just that (we owe you big time!), and we thought Phil was only going to be a little late and that he could go and collect her. However delays with the weather and the airlines meant that Alex and I finished at the hospital and made it home before Phil even landed!
The grommets went in smoothly and Alex came out of it really well, Phil made it home – at 2.30pm – and life went on as normal. Not the birthday day we envisaged for Jenny, but she loved unwrapping her presents, and loved the presents too!
Fast forward to Wednesday morning Alex was unexpectedly sick, had a sleepy day at school and was sick again upon getting home. Didn’t want any tea, and woke at midnight with both vomiting and diarrhea. Next morning he couldn’t even keep clear fluids down, so we rang the hospital, they were concerned enough to shuffle appointments and Alex and I headed in for a 12 o’clock slot in clinic. They put his tails in and started IV fluids straight away and at 4pm with Alex still unable to keep fluid down they decided it was safer to admit him.
Phil came in with Jenny and we did a swap, I took Jenny home and Phil stayed in with Alex. This turned out to be a fortuitous arrangement as Friday morning Jenny started with the same symptoms, turned into limpet baby and only mamma would do. Alex ended up staying in hospital for 4 days, until he was able to keep food and drink down with no vomiting and the diarrhea dried up. With Jenny unwell we didn’t make it in every day to visit which was hard on everyone. A big downside to all of this was that what with not eating and the vomiting etc Alex has lost a kilo and is back to 13.4kg. Inevitable, unavoidable and unfortunate but still not what we needed after all the struggles we have had getting him to eat.
The doctors did end up diagnosing what was wrong – somewhere, somehow (probably in DOSA) Alex had caught Rotavirus.
Jenny started with symptoms roughly 3 days after Alex, but since she had been immunised against it, her symptoms were less severe and she recovered from it much faster than he did. Alex had been immunised but unfortunately the chemotherapy essentially wiped out his vaccinations and we haven’t been able to re administer them yet.
Alex was back at school today, not quite his bright and shiny self, but on the up.
Phil however has now come down with it.
Is it next week yet?
