Checking In

Hey all, just a quick lil update. Bash has a follow up appointment tomorrow. The doctors are going to sedate him and then take blood work and a bone marrow aspirate from his hip bone which they will draw his chimerism from. It will show us what his blood cells are doing down at the core. I'm terrified. This is the longest he has ever waited to have blood work done (Last was Sept 14th when his last boost was!) and my mind is racing a million miles a minute. I may look calm and collected on the outside but inside I am falling apart. Its hard to be positive all the time and my mind has wandered to a few dark places and as such I have literally been avoiding writing or talking much about it. 

The last few weeks have been a bit rough. Bash has had a rash on his face for the past three months or so which we finally got into a dermatologist for. They diagnosed the rash as peri orbital dermatitis. We have a cream to put on his face twice a day and it has mostly cleared up. On top of this he has been fighting off a cold for two weeks and is extra clingy. Before his cold started he was complaining his shins hurt and would rub them and say ouchie. This has completely freaked me out. When you're a cancer parent your mind always skips to the worst possible outcome. A bump or bruise, a cough, a complaint of aches, it all brings me careening back to that fateful day of diagnosis. My life will always be this way now, I will always have my back up and my radar on. The second I feel comfortable and drop my guard is when I know it will try to creep back in. Any other parent would say he has growing pains, or that he must have bumped his knee at daycare and it will heal, and that cough is just a cold and it will pass. I'm hyper aware of everything and it super sucks.

I don't want to leave on a negative note so I'll breeze through a summary of our positives for the past few months. We ran in the Believe in the Gold run for childhood cancer awareness, and by run I mean mostly walked ha ha. We had a yearly hematology appointment for the blood clot in Bash's leg where they gave the all clear for another year - no changes, yay! We went to Red Deer for Thanksgiving and Bash got to play with all his cousins and had a blast. We had a fall family photo sesh where we got some awesome pics taken - stay tuned for Xmas cards! Nathan's parents and sister came out to Calgary and we all participated in Light the Night, a walk to raise awareness for blood cancers - we decked out Bash's chariot with lights and turned it into a spaceship, super cool! And of course Halloween! Bash dressed up as a Viking riding on a dragon - he even picked it out!

On that note please send all your positive thoughts and well wishes our way for tomorrow and for the next coming weeks when we will get those chimerism results. Love to you all and thanks for reading my rambles!