Rainbow Cat Pants and the Actual Cat

Tate’s lumbar puncture and chemo day went pretty well. His check-in time was 6:15 am, and there was no conceivable reason for us to arrive that early. We waited in an empty lobby forever. We should have known we were in trouble when the door was locked when we arrived and someone on the cleaning crew happened to walk past the front door and let us in.

Tate had his lumbar puncture with intrathecal methotrexate and got Vincristine and fluids through his port while he was still asleep. The post-op nurse said the anesthesiologist gave him an anti-anxiety medication. She had me laughing! I can’t remember the name of the drug, but she described as “kind of like a girl’s night out.” Tate was SO SILLY when he woke up. He was also very wobbly, so getting him from the driveway to his room when we got home took some real effort. He was swerving and staggering all over the place. I was afraid he was going to fall, but somehow he stayed upright and even seemed to enjoy the experience. He said, “I’m not dizzy, I just don’t have any sense of where the earth is.” Ha ha ha! Then he spent the next two hours climbing out of bed just to stand up and feel that “girls night out” sensation.

At some point Tate announced that he needed his rainbow cat pants and his “actual cat,” and then he fell asleep. He woke up all partied out.

Tate finished up his steroids Saturday night, and that is always a relief. They make him feel so terrible, cranky, weak, and hungry all at the same time. His Aunt Sara sent him a big box of snacks, and he munched on them all week. He has gotten into the habit of hiding his Pringle’s cans because he thinks we’re going to judge him for eating so many. Oh, Tate! Eat all the Pringle’s you want; I promise we won’t think less of you.

Today Tate woke up looking more like himself. He got some good sleep, and his normal color is coming back. Tate is still having abdominal pain, though, and we’re trying to sort out an appointment with the Phoenix Children’s Hospital GI docs. Since Tate is 18 now, the gastro docs have not agreed to see or treat him even though he is an established PCH oncology patient. We felt kind of blindsided by this since the rest of the doctors Tate has had to consult with have been very welcoming. The nurses are trying to get someone in that department to take him on, but so far no luck. Plus the clinic seems to be running on a skeleton crew with people taking days off around the 4th of July, and the few in the office probably need to focus on the patients in front of them. I understand that. I’ll be calling the GI department tomorrow again to plead our case. Greg and I were hoping to keep Tate’s treatment under the Phoenix Children’s Hospital umbrella so all his doctors have access to all his records. We’ll see how that shakes out. If we need to move on for treatment for the abdominal pain, we will do it quickly at this point. It’s not fixing itself, and we will do whatever it takes to get him the help he needs.

Tate is back to taking his daily walks, and we’re going to resume his at-home workouts tomorrow. His stomach was hurting and then he had chemo, so it’ has been a couple weeks since he felt like he could exercise. He has been swimming with Greg a couple days per week since it got really hot out, which is great. I wish he would swim every day, but he said it makes him sore all over and he needs recovery days. We’ll be taking it slow tomorrow so as to avoid an injury on his first day back. I don’t want to break Tate.