Southward

When you have a kid with cancer, you deal with a lot of crap, but you also get a lot of free stuff. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there’s a family alive that wouldn’t trade all the free stuff for a healthy kid, but still. As long as they’re giving free stuff out, why not take advantage, right?

So, we are currently on a free trip to Eilat, at an all-inclusive hotel, called Magic Sunrise. Or, as the Israelis call it, Majeek Sunrize, with the R in the back of your throat. We swung by the hospital this morning for a quick CBC. Adi’s WBC and neutrophils are CRAZY LOW, but his HB and his platelets were high enough for them to give us the go-ahead – with restrictions, of course. No pool, no beach, no crowded movie theatres. But the trips to the Dolphin Reef and the Underwater Lookout are fine, as is the trip to King’s City – although no adventure rides, of course. So a quiet vacation, but that’s okay.

We’re here until Wednesday, and then we head back home. On Thursday, Adi has a bone marrow biopsy – an important one. It’s Day 78, which means that based on the results they see, we’ll find out whether we need a bone marrow transplant. Of course, we won’t find out right away – it’ll take a week to 10 days. And while we’re waiting, what the heck, let’s start our HR treatments.

HR treatments? Yes, well, those would be the series of three High Risk treatments that Adi gets to do because he was a poor responder to prednisone. I was just reading about them, and basically we’ll come as close to destroying him as we can without actually, you know, destroying him. He’ll be hospitalized for at least 6 days at a time for each of the three treatments, and let’s just go ahead and assume that there will be a fever or an infection somewhere in there.

Anyway, yeah, we figured this was a good opportunity to get some time away and see all the kids. Some family together time. Right AFTER Chanuka vacation ended. Because this way, the kids get to miss an extra 4 days of school, and Lior can stress out over her midterms, and we can be SO TOGETHER YAY, because we won’t see the other kids at all when Adi is in the hospital. Cheers!

P.S. This is one of those classy hotels with no wi-fi. So you can expect my kids to be in a SUPER GREAT MOOD at the end of all this togetherness!