It is so nice to be back home, eating home cooked food, sleeping in my own bed, cuddling up with my 2 darlings, with one trying her best to lick the other! The ward, to its credit, is really cheerily painted, yellow walls, fish and other sea creatures swimming on the walls, and nurses who do their best to make treatment bearable. It is nonetheless, an oncology ward, and the stories behind these walls are both uplifting as well as terrifying. After so many stays, I've come to be familiar with the names of the children tagged on the doors of the rooms. There was a long term stayer, and I noticed the name, simply because it was such a beautiful name. Like Maeve, she has lymphoma, but in this case, hers was a relapse. I was shocked one day when I was told she had gone to ICU. I could not sleep the entire night, even though i didn't know this child personally. Just the thought of a little child in ICU devastated me and created such fears for my own child. Each parent in this ward maintains an unusually chirpy exterior, voices a little higher, smiles a little brighter, to cheer on their little troopers, but within each parent, is truely the heart of darkness. Everyone sympathises with those whose children have passed the stage of cure, and thank God that it is NOT their child. Here, I've also seen children who are amputees and it is hard to stomach. How did their parent explain to their child that sorry, the doctor has to cut your leg, hand, off? So for these reasons, it is good to be home and almost pretend that everything's normal again. After all, at home, Maeve's a typical 4 year old, jumping, running, skipping, climbing the gate, no matter how much i tell her not to.
These few days will also see me getting paranoid as her counts drop once more. I suspect her counts are even lower this time as she has been very tired, wanting to sleep an hour after she has woken up. So pray for protection for her as well as our family, so that none of us will fall sick or even come into contact, unwittingly with sick people. Since I don't leave the house at all, it isn't an issue for me, but Bern works in a school, the hotbed for germs! so pray for protection especially for him.