The Good, The Bad and The Scary

The Good
I got my first smile from Jasper yesterday . . . followed by many, many more.  He has grown so much in the last month and it has been a blessing that he and his parents (who have now become nameless as all parents of newborns do) could come this weekend.  It certainly put a smile on Jimmie's face to be the first to hold Jasper when they arrived Friday night.  And I was thrilled to get so many big grins from our youngest grandson.  It doesn't get much better than that.  I also laughed that Jasper enjoyed surveying the room and bestowed fleeting smiles on a box of envelopes and a large copper picture of 2 elephants from Zambia.  But while the wall of masks Jimmie has collected from around the world drew his attention repeatedly he remained deadly serious while staring at them.  I agree, Jasper.  Some of those faces look very strange.

The Bad
Jimmie's white blood cell count had gone up enough in Friday's lab work that the doctor approved the chemo shot for Friday night.  That should have been in the Good list, but taking the shot shortly after Jasper arrived made Jimmie very sick again, which was certainly not how he wanted to spend the weekend.

The Scary
Jimmie suddenly coughed up some bright red blood about midnight Saturday night.  A few seconds later he coughed up some more, and then more again.  Over the course of the next 15 minutes the coughing spread out to about every 2 minutes, but the amount of blood coughed was increasing.  So I put in an emergency call to the doctor's office.  Fortunately, Jimmie's oncologist was the one on-call this weekend.  Unfortunately, he did not hear his pager with the first buzz.  I called again an hour later and he called me immediately, very apologetic that the first page did not wake him.  By then it had been about 15 minutes since Jimmie had coughed any blood so we were both hoping this ordeal was over.  But the doctor gave me some instructions that I expected (like, Stop the blood thinner!) and some I didn't (like, if Jimmie gets worse and needs to go to the ER call an ambulance rather than driving him yourself.)  He called back a couple of times during the night just to check on Jimmie.  Thankfully, I could report that Jimmie was resting quietly with no further blood loss.

- Linda