ferrousland.com - diary archives
Sunday, August 31, 2003
happy birthday, britt! - 06:58 PM
greg sent out a link via email today to some pictures which he & mon took of britt's fourth birthday party in the hospital. she looked really happy, it was lovely to see her smiling. 
i asked mon if i could choose one or two to put on my site here, since so many of my site visitors are thinking of her & praying for her (which monica was very happy to hear about. she's quite thankful, of course) & she said that wasn't a problem at all. i'll post the link to the pics at the bottom of this entry.
mon & greg said she wasn't so well earlier in the day. she was feeling quite nauseous (one of the many horrible side effects of the chemotherapy) but they'd given her some anti-nausea medication which had kicked in by the afternoon when her party was on.
i caught up with monnie this afternoon again, by phone, to hear the latest & just for general chat. the parents at kelsey's school got together to organise a cake stall & they raised about $380 for mon & greg to put towards parking at the hospital. that's so sweet. it surprises me that the hospital doesn't allow one parking pass per family of the patient staying at the hospital or something. fair enough if you're just someone visiting, but surely at least one parent of the child deserves to get free parking to help lessen the burden. monica's staying at the hospital & they only have the one car anyway, so when greg brings kelsey to visit in the afternoons, it seems he has to pay for every minute that he's there. to me, that sucks a lot. 
more nice things. there's a parent of a child who'll be in the same class as britt next year (i assume this means that she might be able to go to school after all) who is a fireman. he was in contact with mon & greg & asked if britt would like a visit. so he arrived in his fireman's uniform (not the one for fighting fires, the one they stay in when they're waiting for a fire) & brought some fire service colouring books & collector cards & the like. they also went outside to see the fire truck. britt's connected to a machine at the moment by various tubes of this & that, so she couldn't get in the truck, but he said to give them a call when she's free of it & he'll let her ride in the truck & they'll take a trip to the fire station. very cool. i'd be up for that too, i reckon .. lol! 
she has a sore, a kind of cut, on her body which hadn't been healing up, which is now showing signs of improvement since they last checked it. if this heals up properly, then britt will be allowed to go home & they'll only have to make trips to the hospital a few times a week instead of having to stay there. that would be a big load off them all.
before this happened, when i thought of someone's child being sick with this sort of horrible disease, i thought only, "oh, how sad & worried they all must be," but i had no idea of the other many repercussions. greg has to take time off work to be with kelsey while monica stays in the hospital with britt. which means that mon & greg have to be apart for all of that time. greg has to change his routine to ensure that kelsey is looked after properly at home with meals & washing etc. kelsey misses mummy because she's not at home. this places extra stress on greg. mon feels sad because she misses kelsey & greg & might also feel the stress of not being able to look after them all as she normally would. the two girls also miss each other. then of course there's the financial stress placed on both of them, especially greg since he's the one working, yet having to take time off from that work. i'm sure i haven't even covered half of it.
one good thing which has come from this, which monnie pointed out, is that kelsey is really enjoying the extra time spent with her dad, since he's now become her primary carer for a while. i imagine that he's enjoying it too, despite the extra stress this would place on him.
i'll continue to let you know of more news as i hear it.
if you'd like to see some pics of britt & of her birthday party, go here.
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