Today was not what we were expecting at all.
I arrived at the hospital as usual to find Adam munching his way through his breakfast. So far so normal. A quick hello and goodbye, and Alison returned to the flat to shower, change and prepare lunch. Equally unremarkable.
Not long after Alison had left a member of the Physics team came up to remeasure Adam's levels. On Friday they were 800 and something megabecquerels. In laymen's terms that's 'too high to be anywhere other than in the lead-lined isolation room'. To put things in perspective; directly after he'd been given the therapeutic dose of radioactive iodine (131I) his reading was more than 8,000. He was HOT. The decay is non-linear and we'd been showering Adam at most once a day, so I was incredibly surprised when the reading this morning came back as 225 and I was told we could go home (with restrictions of course). Home? Today? That's the last thing I expected.
Adam was happy too. He got straight on the phone to tell everybody, although his joy was tempered slightly when I told him Jake and Jessica were both at school and his news would have to wait for at least another 5 hours.
We carried on with lunch as planned and then sorted everything out during the course of the afternoon. Before we were discharged with our yellow card containing Adam's restrictions a final reading was taken of 170. This means that in a couple of days there will be no restrictions at all for adults around Adam, but he must not be in prolonged close contact with children or pregnant women. Which all works out rather well... Jake and Jessica are staying with friends for the next two nights (thank you parents of said friends). During this time Adam can be at home whilst we sort a few things out, and then he and Alison are going away to the caravan for a week. When they return we will have Adam's levels rechecked, but we anticipate that it will be at least another week before he can resume normal contact with his siblings.
Not surprisingly Adam was in terrific spirits when we finally let him leave his room.. We walked from the hospital to the flat, a journey of about 15 minutes with middle-sized legs, had some tea, packed everything up and that was that. Just before 9pm we arrived back home.
Adam's scans on Thursday showed extensive uptake throughout his bone marrow. Whilst I hate seeing or hearing that EVER, it is actually good news in the sense that it confirms that he has received a therapeutic dose in the areas that were being targeted by this treatment. In last night's post I hoped we wouldn't be at UCH much longer. Today we are home. I figure I must be on a roll, so now let's hope Adam has a complete response to the MIBG therapy.
I arrived at the hospital as usual to find Adam munching his way through his breakfast. So far so normal. A quick hello and goodbye, and Alison returned to the flat to shower, change and prepare lunch. Equally unremarkable.
Not long after Alison had left a member of the Physics team came up to remeasure Adam's levels. On Friday they were 800 and something megabecquerels. In laymen's terms that's 'too high to be anywhere other than in the lead-lined isolation room'. To put things in perspective; directly after he'd been given the therapeutic dose of radioactive iodine (131I) his reading was more than 8,000. He was HOT. The decay is non-linear and we'd been showering Adam at most once a day, so I was incredibly surprised when the reading this morning came back as 225 and I was told we could go home (with restrictions of course). Home? Today? That's the last thing I expected.
Adam was happy too. He got straight on the phone to tell everybody, although his joy was tempered slightly when I told him Jake and Jessica were both at school and his news would have to wait for at least another 5 hours.
We carried on with lunch as planned and then sorted everything out during the course of the afternoon. Before we were discharged with our yellow card containing Adam's restrictions a final reading was taken of 170. This means that in a couple of days there will be no restrictions at all for adults around Adam, but he must not be in prolonged close contact with children or pregnant women. Which all works out rather well... Jake and Jessica are staying with friends for the next two nights (thank you parents of said friends). During this time Adam can be at home whilst we sort a few things out, and then he and Alison are going away to the caravan for a week. When they return we will have Adam's levels rechecked, but we anticipate that it will be at least another week before he can resume normal contact with his siblings.
Not surprisingly Adam was in terrific spirits when we finally let him leave his room.. We walked from the hospital to the flat, a journey of about 15 minutes with middle-sized legs, had some tea, packed everything up and that was that. Just before 9pm we arrived back home.
Adam's scans on Thursday showed extensive uptake throughout his bone marrow. Whilst I hate seeing or hearing that EVER, it is actually good news in the sense that it confirms that he has received a therapeutic dose in the areas that were being targeted by this treatment. In last night's post I hoped we wouldn't be at UCH much longer. Today we are home. I figure I must be on a roll, so now let's hope Adam has a complete response to the MIBG therapy.
No comments:
Post a Comment