Sophie's World

8:00 PM: We had a bit of excitement today. Sophie was due to go to clinic tomorrow for treatment, but we ended up taking her a day early because she woke up with a fever (and felt pretty crummy). For once, it happened during working hours, so we didn't have to go to the emergency room or anything. We got Elisabeth dropped off at school, got ourselves organized, and took off for Chapel Hill. Randall and I both took her (and made arrangements for Elisabeth in the afternoon, just in case we got delayed). Unfortunately, Sophie overheard me tell someone on the phone that she was going to clinic today before I had a chance to tell her, and she was pretty upset about it. Eventually, she calmed down when we talked about practicing the IV with the sock Monkey. Letting her play a computer game while we got ready also helped!

When we got there, she practiced with the Monkey right away, and also on her stuffed kitty (Honeycatt), who was scared and cried but held still. We put numbing cream on before we left home, and it was a long time before they were ready to give the IV a try, so the cream had been on for 3 hours by that time. She cried loudly, shook like a leaf, and sweated like you wouldn't believe, but she didn't kick, and she eventually held her hands (and kicking feet) still. One nurse tried to insert an IV on her left hand and couldn't get it to work. Then a second nurse tried her right and couldn't get that hand to work either. Both veins were blown by that time.

Those were the only two places we had used cream, so we kind of had to start over. They were testing out some new patches that have numbing cream and some kind of reaction that warms the area while it numbs. That's supposed to help "plump up" the veins. We did one patch on the inside of her left forearm and another just above her left wrist on the outside of her hand. After we waited for it to work, back in we went to try again. After some fiddling (and lots of crying by Sophie), the one on her left wrist worked. Although she was upset, it was really amazing how still she was. They injected the vincristine with no problems, and then administered an IV antibiotic (because of the fever) over 30 minutes. They took blood and urine cultures, so we'll just have to wait to hear back on those. Given that Elisabeth has been suffering from some sort of upper respiratory thing lately, it's probably just a virus.

We were headed out by 3:00 (with plenty of time to pick up Elisabeth) and then ran into really bad traffic. There was an overhead sign that said the left three lanes of traffic needed to merge into the right lane because of an accident 4 miles ahead. Well, 30 minutes later (or more!), we got to that mile marker, and there wasn't an accident in sight, no lanes were closed, and everything totally cleared up. Go figure! We were still home in plenty of time to pick up Elisabeth.

Life at home this evening has been wonderfully normal. Randall had a meeting, so the girls and I had dinner on our own. The girls had much-needed bang trims after their baths tonight, and they both let me blow-dry their hair. I just may have a second career!

Twenty-seven days to go until our Make-A-Wish trip to Disney World!!!