our leukemia story part 3

okey well james was undergoing full body radiation in preparation for his bone marow transplant and i was nearly 8 months pregnant with thomas so things were pretty stressful, on his last day of radiation the bone marrow arrived and it was then attached to james iv and the waiting

game started again, i think it was about a week later when they did the first blood test and it was good he had started to produce platelets ect so we were very optimistic and before long we had a succesful tansplant so we were happy but it was still early days, well 4 weeks later when i was due it was time to go into the hospital to have thomas, luckily it was during the day and our other children were at day care, james was still very fragile at this time so we were still very worried about him so it we basicly  went into hospital and 2 hours later thomas was here, it was the easiest labour i had ever had and i was really focused as i wanted to get back to james as soon as i could , 6 hours after i had thomas i was distarged from the hospital and went back to our unit opposite princess margrett hospital,

it was a really rough night as i had severe after pains and did not get any sleep at all then the next day all the kids came out in chicken pox so the manager of the ronald mcdonald house came over and told me we couldn't stay as chicken pox is deadly to alot of the children and especially deadly to our own son (we didn't alow any of our kids in his room anyway, instead we would take vidio camera footage of the girls during the day then play it on a tape for james in his room, it was heart renching he would ly there and watch them all day he didn';t want to watch anything else except his sisters playing) so 2 days after i had thomas i packed the car up with our newborn and our other 3 children and drove 400 kms back home (rob stayed with james in hospital) for 5 weeks i was on my own with the kids as none of my family had had chicken pox before except me wich was really weird,  the doctor had told them to wait till they cleared up, 5 weeks past and mum rung and said "stuff it!' it should be fine now its been long enough (for some reason the kids got a double dose of them) then everyone came to see me then guess what, they all got chicken pox , anyway 6 weeks had passed since the kids first got chicken pox and our local doctor had cleared the kids and said it was safe to come back up to perth so of we went , when we got there james was about ready to come out so he came over to stay with us in the unit, but then he started to pee blood so we rushed him back over to the hospital and they admitted him for observation, they told us he has a virus that has traveled to his bladder but hopefully it will start to clear up,

but it didn't instead it got worse and worse it got so bad he was bleeding clots thats when they decided to put him into theatre and get a super pubic tube put in and  a cathada which they used to flush water through his bladder to free it up of clots so that it could heal, 6 months went by and it wasn't getting any better he had built up fluids around his heart and lungs makeing it hard to breath and he was on alot of medications it was a nightmare nothing seemed to be working and he was getting worse, i would go in every day hopeing that it had started to clear up but instead i'd go in to see all these blood clots in his bag full of blood it was terrible they ended up putting this mask on him that forced air into his lungs to keep them open as they were closeing up i was crying all the time,

about every 5 to15 min i'd start calling for the nurse to come quick as a blood clot was blocking his cathadu and they would have to syringe water in the other end to try forse it out james would scream with pain it was dreadful i got to the point were i would get really emotional and shout at the nurse as  they were doing it wrong (the nurses changed constantly so each new nurse would have to re learn the best way to release the clots it was so frustrateing, and james condition was very uneke so it wasn't something any of them were firmiliar with, i wanted to be there all day and night as i wanted to explain to each nurse myself what to do but it was just not  possible as we both needed to sleep,and we had the other kids, hubby would go there in the night when he wasn't working and i was there during the day , as we needed the money as we still had to pay rent for our house back home and all other expeses child care ect hubby did some local work

finally after a long 6 months they gave him some steriods for the fluid around his heart and lungs and  to everyones amazement  his bleeding started to clear up it was amazeing you would have never seen anyone as happy as we were that day, as i had been preparing myself for james death it was so horrifing i was very distraught as was hubby it was the worst feeling we had ever experienced and then to have this happen we were jumping with joy, he stayed in hospital for at least another month as they wanted to make sure it had completely cleared up first before removeing the super pubic tube and the cathadu, and this medical discovery was documented into there medical book for future reference which was great

to be continued.............