Update

Pretty quiet here. Daniel is in Cairns with Bethany, Caleb and Ruben and I am here in Brisbane with Joshua. It is his week for recovering from chemo ready for the start of his third cycle next Wednesday. The treatment for his type of cancer is pretty hard and fast. Hopefully that means we will be done with it relatively quickly!

So for us in Brisbane it means a quiet week at the accommodation with a few trips to hospital for check ups. They usually take most of the day so it keeps us pretty occupied. The usual routine is, arrive at the hospital, (hopefully not too early), wait for an hour and get obs done. (weight, blood pressure that sort of thing). Wait another hour to see the consultant who chats and pokes and prods Josh.

This is Joshua's consultant, Andy Moore.

Wait another hour and get bloods taken. Wait another hour for the blood results, to see whether Josh needs any transfusions. Pray that he doesn't, because obviously you don't want him to need one, but also because you can't bear waiting another 3 hours which is how long the transfusion will take! On Tuesday Josh also had a problem with one of his lines (see below) which was blocked, so that meant another hour of waiting for the pharmacy to send down the anticoagulant to unblock it! Joy of joys we also had to return in 24 hours for them to remove the anticoagulant. We arrived on time and then of course, you guessed it, we waited for an hour in the waiting room for a 30 second procedure! 

I am moaning a bit because it's hard waiting, but overall we get excellent treatment, all the staff are lovely and very professional. There are tea and coffee making facilities, food in the fridge that you can help yourself from, a toastie maker, a coffee maker, TVs, teams that come round to entertain you - it's as good as it can be. Here are a few photos from inside the hospital.

A standard single room

Inside the hospital. Oncology day unit is level 5, the ward is level 11.

The roof top garden with a nice view over Brisbane and the river.

Not sure if we mentioned about Joshua's line before. Here's some info for those of you who don't know about these things - I didn't.

A central line is a tube inserted into a vein in the chest. It is used to give chemo and other drugs and also to take blood. It stays in until the treatment is over. The exit site is cleaned once a week and flushed to stop it blocking, and the dressing is changed. Needless to say, Josh does not love this and we all have to try and remember that it's there so we don't knock it or pull it. However, it is much better than all the needles he would have to have without it.

This is roughly how Joshua's looks. Clearly this is not him, he is not that hairy!

So tomorrow it's the waiting game again, obs, bloods, line care. Hopefully then we should have 3 days out of the hospital before we do it all again on Tuesday. Then we get the added bonus of a chest x-ray and an ultrasound. Basically it's an all day job!

On Wednesday Joshua will be admitted for 7 nights for his chemo and we start the parent merry go round again of taking turns to sleep at the hospital and looking after the other 3. However next week it should be more fun because Daniel's brother and his family and his sister are coming to Brisbane to visit. Joshua is really looking forward to that, so hopefully it will be a good week.