Gavin: Locums motives

After Zoe left last night and posted below, the scare levels went up. The Locum doctor looking after Sonny explained that his lung capacity wasn't acceptable, either caused by the puncture wound or from a new complication where the tumor had created nerve damage meaning his diaphragm had risen up a few inches into his chest. Alongside this, the cancer was fighting back. By releasing cells that create microscopic holes in the veins, fluid is released into the surrounding tissues rather than flushing the disease out. He finished with: 'this boy is on very thin ice'. And he delivered that in front of Sonny.

It was a tough night to say the least. Every bong of a dipping heart monitor and every laboured breath from him meant I pushed the call button. I had no idea how this trio of problems would manifest themselves and, despite begging his pulse rate to come down for the last fortnight, if it now dropped below 70 I shat myself.

This morning our consultants talked us down. A further x-ray showed the diaphragm had returned to it's rightful place (an unfortunate blip that happened just when the x-ray was taken hopefully) the fluid retention had been sorted with a shot of albumin and the lung capacity had always been fairly low considering he has two golf ball sized lumps pushing into them. The Locums frankness was raised at ward round by our nurse (god love her) and we were given an apology from the team. This evening when I'd left to get Ruby, Zoe asked our main super-consultant where this weekend ranked in terms of our league table of scares. "Moderate" was his reply.

We're both much happier. Sonny continues to improve in our uninformed eyes and there's no mistaking that his blood pressure, pulse and temperatures are so much better. We cannot see what's going on inside his body but we can read a heart monitor and watch him play on the mac.

What all this really goes to show is that whatever information we’re given and how that makes us feel, those feelings have no actual bearing on Sonny and his situation. And, although the locum was definitely too blunt (especially in front of Sonny) he was simply calling it as he saw it.

My levels of pragmatism are at their highest. If anyone wants me to resolve a domestic dispute now is a good time to ask.

Zoe: Stake Out

I'm delighted to report that Sonny had a much more comfortable day today. He has been awake for most of the day and his temperature was even normal once or twice but don't get too excited its been off the scale a few times too. However, he ignored his teacher while racking up a hi-score of 103 playing zombie cricket to my sad 38, opened parcels (nice one thank you Rob) watched a repeat of Soccer AM and sat through a rather limp DVD called Big Daddy starring Adam Sandler while the medicine to clear his glandular fever slowly dripped in - the best day we've had for weeks really.

Meanwhile, Gav and I were still rather anxious following yesterday's cock-up. Nobody seemed to be able to tell us much up here so I played detective and tracked Sonny's consultant down, waiting for him to finish his clinic in a rather swish private wing of the hospital to make sure we had some answers today. Turns out it was cancelled because the theatre he was due to have the procedure in was too basic for someone with his complications but it would have been nice for them to tell somebody looking after him. Our consultant was still jolly cross and pardoned his French of yesterday and is trying to get him on the list tomorrow. The nurses were rather wide eyed when they found out where I'd been but I gave a wink to the kind one who had tipped me off.

Zoe: Febrile Excuse

Today Sonny was very unhappy and anxious in anticipation of his endoscopy later today which was planned to see if there was anything suspect in his bowel making him so incredibly hot all the time. From past experience we knew he'd be one of the last on the list due to him being a big grown-up 9 and not 9 months old but by 4pm we were getting twitchy when we still hadn't been given a time to go down. At 4.30 our rather cross consultant had the unwelcome job of telling us that some muppet had cancelled the procedure on Friday due to the fact that he was febrile! Duh! Feeling helpless I went to plead with the gastro team to see if they could squeeze him in only to be told they'd all gone home. Not helpful grrrrrrr.