The New New Normal {R4, Day 11}

I know, you're all like, "what?"
Every day of each round brings new surprises.

Morning "school" with the hospital teacher, Miss Theresa

We were warned near the end of the last round that there was a somewhat-different rule (don't get me started to say "new" because technically, it was always a rule) in place during flu season. Kids with an ANC under 200 aren't allowed off the HOT Unit between the hours of 9am-5pm on weekdays. Weekends and evenings are fair game. Less people around, less chance of sick visitors (?!) to the hospital. Sam's counts went way down over the weekend but today was the first day of the NEW new normal around here. Weekday restrictions....

It didn't seem like it would be such a problem but there was a little bit of extra competition to use the Wii today (don't ask) and only so many times that you can play hide-and-seek around the floor, even with a few episodes of Phineas and Ferb along the way. By 4:30pm, Sam was getting more than a little antsy. Especially since the "library" - from which you can borrow movies - closes at 5pm on Mondays. Looking for new movies is an activity in itself -- sometimes we don't even watch the movies! So I got a little bit of an early reprieve. We were going to go downstairs at 4:45pm, right after Sam had his vitals taken. Except there were a few complications - a little tantrum that got out of control as Sam simply ran out of patience with the day.

Nothing that a little yelling, a little crying, and a few macaroons from a package couldn't cure.

The other day, Sam had a "craving" for these cookies. Who craves Pesadik food in Tishrei? So Auntie Jody made a call....wow (thank you!!!!). Sam was pretty excited. (I tasted one. Yep. Pesadik.)

Platelets and a little throwing up rounded out the day.

Sam giggled and teased as his nurse took his last (awake) set of vitals for the night, so I knew that all was well.

The nurse has to stay in the room for 15 minutes when running platelets to make sure that all goes well. I put her to work and had Sam read her a book!

Tomorrow we're going to consider some new strategies for hanging out on the HOT unit. We're going to brainstorm all the games we can play and employ all of our tactics for being in isolation, except we get the whole floor as our playground. I think the change in attitude will help us a lot. I foresee more scavenger hunts and board games and dance parties in our future. Stay tuned for a full report!