Monday, 10:33pm

Little Pom is FINALLY asleep after a rough, rough afternoon. Everything was fine until six. Earlier, he had gone with daddy to the Family Library where they checked out a couple of movies and got to go to a cool presentation all about bees. He even got to whack a beehive shaped pinata and bring back 16 (count 'em...16) bouncy balls. When he got back, daddy left to go do some laundry and things started to go downhill. They confiscated his flowers! The nurse came in and told him that he had a flower delivery (thank you, "Mysterious Stranger"!) but that she couldn't bring them in. I asked why, seeing as how he had 2 other flower arrangements already and she said that she had to take those out too! LP was inconsolable. Turns out, there are children with cancer on our floor who are imuno-compromised. They can't be around fresh flowers, because they might harbor bugs or germs or something. So....LP's flowers are all in the nurses suite until (thanks to the hospital psychologist) medical photography comes up tomorrow to take pictures of them for Little Pom. Then, we have to take them home. So that was insult to the injury of the day.
In the late afternoon, we had visitors, who sweetly brought LP some balloons and a small hockey toy to play with. We had a nice visit, but when it was six o'clock, I asked for his medicine. I figured if we started earlier in the day, it would be less of a struggle....HA!

TWO HOURS later, we'd gotten two of the five medications into him. He swallows his iron pill with no difficulty and now loves Tums (after I got them to switch it out for the nasty Calcium Bicarbonate and then shoved it into his mouth to get him to try it) but two of the others (a pink-syrup that's not amoxicillian and the Sodium Bicarb) he just freaked out over. I truly think that this was the worst day yet. The doctors and the nurses did EVERYTHING (and I mean everything) they could think of, short of strapping him down and force-feeding him. And he was like a kidlet possessed. I just asked the nurse: the other pink stuff is called Bactrim. Anyway, the pediatrician on duty eventually just gave up. She (rightly) said that we should not have to fight him for 4 hours a day just to get his medicine into him. She had to mark his chart that he refused to take some of his oral meds. She also threatened a G.I. tube if he wouldn't start taking it.

I spent 45 minutes sobbing in the Chapel. A student nurse assigned to us, Jon, was absolutely wonderful with him and with me. He came down and sat with me, listened, talked, got me telling funny stories about our crazy life and cheered me....relatively....up. Jon was working on a 2nd degree in nursing after getting his Bachelors in History and then working construction for several years. I think he'll be an amazing nurse. And it didn't hurt that he was smokin' hot, either. (Don't judge....his presence was the ONLY upside to my day)

Anyway, as I've been writing this, the nurse came in and I asked her about the G.I. tube. She said that she doesn't think it's very likely that they would do that just for 1 or 2 medications. If he was refusing all meds AND not eating, maybe....but she doubts it would happen in this situation. Tomorrow she's going to intercept Little Poms's breakfast tray and we'll crush the sodium bicarb and put it into his applesauce. If he doesn't see us do it, hopefully he'll eat it all up. Keep your fingers crossed. In the meantime, his blood pressure is WAY high- they just tested it and it was 133/100, so we're taking meds for that too. The BP medication is #5, for those of you keeping score up above. He'll take it without any problems, so of the 5 meds, we're only having issues with two. That to me is not G.I. worthy...and they can't do anything without our consent, right?

So, I'm done. Done. DONE for today. I'm off to bed and will post here as soon as there's news tomorrow. To those who don't like this format and are upset I've switched over: I'm really, really sorry. It just makes my life easier. You can still call anytime.