A Day with the Monkey

This morning I decided to go back to the hospital to help my wife during the morning watch. I usually go to the hospital at noon during nap so I can study and give mom a break but today I decided to come earlier.

Currently, mommy is with Parker as the cleaner is working inside Parker's isolation area (the flute). I had mentioned that I felt that the people who clean Parker's room was not what we were used to in Toronto but I must expand on that. See, there are two sets of cleaners that do the room. One that comes in early in the morning to clean outside the flute and one inside. To be honest, the people who clean inside the flute are just as good as the people who cleaned in Toronto. They are absolutely amazing. Very nice and extremely thorough. Today's cleaner also is in charge of bringing the food for the room. My wife is finding out now how she can get a hamburger or pizza as a meal instead of rice every day. To be honest, it is not only rice but whoever is here does get rice with their meal if they choose.

We are hoping that we get some nice weather soon. It has rained pretty much every day the past month so my wife has not been able to sit out in the sun. Yesterday we broke both of our umbrellas. One, as soon as we got home from the hospital and back to the hotel. The other when we were on the way to Esselunga to get food for dinner. We figured that we could just purchase a new umbrella at Esselunga but were surprised that they did not sell umbrellas. My wife picked one up later from Unes on her way back to put Parker to bed.

Today is another major testing day for Parker. It is day +21 which means that they do more extensive testing on Parker. Looking at his chart it looks like they are doing a flow cytometry test to differentiate the kinds of lymphocytes he has. For those of you who want to do what a flow cytometry test is you can click here to go back to a previous article I wrote.

I am not sure if I had mentioned in an earlier post but Parker had developed a bad diaper rash as a result of the bicarbonate and antibiotic that Parker has been receiving. We waited a few days very patiently (mostly) until a special creme arrived yesterday. It is suppose to be 80% zinc oxide. After only one day of using the new cream it already seems to have made quite a difference. Parker's rash on his bottom and front (near his genitals) where they place the sack to collect urine is diminishing significantly.

I have been writing this article off and on over the past couple of hours in a text editor here at the hospital. The doctor just finished her examination of Parker and I was surprised that Parker now places the end of the stethoscope on his chest for her to listen to. I am not normally here for this so when my wife told me that he has been doing that for a while I was surprised. Very good little monkey! We are very fortunate that Parker is developing like any other child and that he has not experienced any negative side effects of ADA to date.

Mommy is now doing some cleaning while Parker plays with his puzzle in his crib. I stole the outlet converter that we normally use for his DVD player so he cannot listen to music while he plays. Once I am done charging my notebook I will give the little monkey back his music.

We hope that everyone has a wonderful week-end. Lately, we have been missing home very, very much. Hospital life and rainy weather makes us think about all the things we would normally be doing if we were at home.

Ciao!