Day 18

The night wasn't too bad because she was able to eat at 2am because she wasn't scheduled until 10am for the PICC line (which she had to fast for). We gave her benadryl to try and get her to sleep as long as possible. I was hoping for 9am and had worked it out with the nurses to leave us alone after 6am. However, leave it to the infectious disease resident to come in at 8:30. I begged him to not wake her up. He comes to my side of the bed to check his "questions off of the list". We luckily keep her asleep until he says, "Ok, I need to get a quick listen". She hates that the most out of anything... and she was asleep. I knew she was going to wake up. He pretty much did even though I asked him not to for fear she would wake up... and she did but while screaming too. Thank you resident. I'm all about a teaching hospital, but can we not do teaching not on a 2 year old while she is fasting.... on steroids..? Luckily, she fell back asleep until Dr. Verma came in. She doesn't have a quiet voice. It was then that Taleah was requesting food. I knew I could hold her off until 10am. Our nurse got a call that we were bumped to 10:30... and then another that it would be 11:00...and then 11:15. I wanted to freak out. Poor Taleah was STARVING. It took everything from me and my mom to keep her distracted and even then she wasn't. She kept asking me to find the doctor to ask if she could eat and go home.

We found Mathew... yay!! We played for over an hour to help pass the time. She says," He has leukemia like me". So cute.

We finally made it down to Radiology for the PICC line about 11:45. Leaving her on another table to be sedated was just about more than I could take. She was heartbroken and knew exactly what was happening. It felt all too famliar and too frequent to be happening again. I didn't have to leave her side until she was "out". The PICC went great and we knew it meant we were that much closer to going home. YAY! We packed up and headed on our way.

The drive home was not great. She wanted out and wanted to be home. She did sleep for half of the time. She also complained of leg pain. The docs kept asking me if she was experiencing that yet but I told them no. Now she does and I can totally tell a difference.

She was more than happy to be home. I can tell she is more relaxed and not on edge because she doesn't have to worry about anyone coming through the door. She pretended to color Tavia's hair, played pretend, ate good food and laughed a lot. I LOVED it!! It has been more than great to hear her little laugh.

I will say walking in that door and seeing Slade's reaction ripped my heart in half. He saw me and immediately burst into tears reaching for me. The saddest, heartbroken cry. Made me feel horrible that I left him for pretty much a week.

She is not entirely herself, but more and more of herself has been coming through and it is a little piece of heaven in my life.

I know one of the lessons I am supposed to learn... to enjoy the quality time I have with her. Enjoy the small things. Stop worrying about stuff that really doesn't matter.

Playing tea party with her, playing pretend, making her laugh, holding her in my arms, and having conversations with her is what I should be doing. I haven't mastered this "lesson", but I know for a fact that it was one of the things that this cancer crap is trying to teach me. I'll be working on it!