Home Sweet Home

Sunday was Gracie last day of chemo for the 4th round. She was supposed to finish up around 4:45pm and then go home!!!! At about 1:30 she started having respiratory spasms--she could breathe but it was getting harder for her and she began panicking (of course!!! who wouldn't panic) which made it worse to the point she started throwing up!! After that though she was so worn out that she was like a rag doll and she began dozing off--but it helped her relax and about 20 minutes later her oxygen level went back up and she seemed to be all right. She didn't have to go on oxygen so we were able to come home as planned--yeah!! But we got a stern caution that if Grace started not breathing we should take her to the closest ER--and if she began turning blue we should call 9-1-1. She continued by adding that 'breathing is really important!'
Whew!!! That was great information and I began laughing then the nurse realized what she said and started laughing too. We definitely don't want to add 'ambulance ride' to our list of new experiences so we hope there's no blueness that occurs over the next week or so.

Our first day at home was the first day of school. Luckily, we bought the girls' school supplies at the end of last year from the PTA!! Jane and Jessica both got really nice teachers--we've already had parent/teacher conferences--we try to avoid those =)!! We've also met Gracie's teacher at the conference with the principal, counselor, and homebound rep. I've never had to meet with the principal before. Fun, fun times. Gracie is enrolled in the 'homebound program'. It's a program where cancer kids are assigned to a teacher and classroom but a tutor comes either to your home or to the hospital to teach the child so they stay up with the class. The teacher meets with the tutor, so the tutor teaches the same things that they are learning in class (all tutors are certified teachers). Amazingly enough the tutor only meets with Grace 4 hours a week--the tutor said that usually homebound kids end up being ahead of the classroom. We could hardly believe it--they can really go fast when it's one-on-one. Anyway, that starts today--we'll see how it goes.

It's looks like we won't have to start the 5th round until day 21--we are on day 9 today. We'll see. It seems everytime we get our hopes up that we'll be at home for a while it seems something comes up--but she is home and a nice beige-peachy-pinky color--HOORAY!!

We hope this finds you well--