With the countdown started to the first round of chemo, it leaves me with a limited window of time to get a lot of things done that need to be done before Brian comes home from the hospital.
The good part is that I know exactly what I need to get done that will help limit his chances of infection during the neutropenic period. And he will be neutropenic probably 2-3 days after his chemo ends. and that will be the case for a up to a couple of weeks, then when his blood counts recover, he'll get chemo again, then be neutropenic again, etc..until we get to transplant time.
So needless to say I have a giant list of things I ideally want to get done. But like most of my infamous "lists" it is probably impractical since Scott and Stephanie also have to work, and Brian is too tired to help with a lot of the things.
Today almost all of the rest of our snow and ice melted, so I went and dug out the rest of the christmas decorations so they can be packed up and put away tomorrow. How far away christmas seems now. How quickly the excitement of our first christmas in the new house changed to worry and fear.
I also worked on putting a lot of things in cabinets. Things we might normally have out in the kitchen like canisters, or decorative items...I know that dust will not be a good thing, and the less there is for dust to collect on, the easier it is to clean and keep bacteria and fungi down.
We also have to get all the hepafilters out. We had one for every room last time Brian got sick, and when we moved here, a couple got stored in the attic, (we already have them in the bedrooms) so we need to get the others out, and we actually need probably two more due to the open configuration of the house. I do believe at least for us, with all the pets, it does make a big difference in running them.
I know that some of you wonder about the pets, so I am going to make a blanket statement about them right now....do we have a lot of pets...yes we do...does it make more work and more chance Brian might get exposed to bacteria that could make him sick, yes it does.
But our pets are our family. They are what gets us through situations like this, and since the truth is Brian very well might not survive his battle with cancer, I would never take away or prevent him from being around his fur family. And the doctors are not really concerned with the pets. Their primary concern is pulmonary fungal infection. It is my concern as well since Brian already has a chronic skin fungal problem left over from the previous chemotherapy treatments.
tomorrow I am going to go grocery shopping and make all the meals we need for next week, lasagna and chili and stew and some soups so they are already to go for us. It will make it easier for Scott to just grab a container to take to work, so for me to bring Brian some food, because I already know there is NO way he will eat the hospital food. It might even take me into saturday to get all that done.
On Sunday we're going to scrub down all the surfaces in Brian's room, and pack for the hospital. I will get the call tomorrow letting me know what ungodly hour we need to be there for monday morning.
This is exactly how I stopped sleeping last time, but this time around I know better, and I am very careful to make sure no matter what, I get at least 6 hours of sleep.
What gets done, gets done....I can't get that wonder woman bustier up over the fat roll anymore anyhow....
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