Long Days

These have been long days. Yesterday we ran the evaporator from 7:00 am until midnight, and even at 8:00 am the next morning it was still steaming. But that wasn't what made the day a long one. In the morning Paula noticed swelling on Wren's head. Naturally we feared the worst, a return of neuroblastoma, but a visit to our family doctor allayed these worries. The diagnosis was a bump on the head, a pretty bad one. Wren had fallen out of bed that night, but she'd done this before without causing such a bump. An x-ray was scheduled just to make sure that everything was okay.

A short time after the x-ray we learned that Wren had a three centimeter fracture in her skull starting near her ear and running upward. The cause of this fracture was a fall from her hospital bed last Thursday night, her last night in the hospital. While sleeping, she had wiggled her way around the railing near the middle of the bed and fallen into the cardiac monitor before hitting the cement floor. Because she was still hooked up to the I.V., she was given a dose of sedative and was able to return to sleep. The fracture went undetected.

Since then she has flown home to Smithers, has been running and dancing around the house, and has been zooming up and down the driveway on her push-bike. Little did we know. The second fall from bed aggravated the injury, causing rapid swelling.

What a strange thing to be thankful that your kid has a broken skull, rather than a relapse of cancer.

I couldn't have picked a worse time to put together a trampoline.

What does this mean for Wren? It just means that she must not aggravate the fracture again. It will heal on its own in three or four weeks.  Her bones are strong and she should heal relatively quickly. One more hurdle for Wrennie, in case she needed more. The good news is that we gave Wren her last subcutaneous injection tonight (a drug called GM-CSF, it stimulates her immune system).  May it be the last. We celebrated with a little cake and a happy dance.

The house is filled with the smell of maple syrup as we boil down the final 13 litres of the last batch of the season. The sap sugar had dropped to below 2% in the past two days, a sign that it is time to clean up the gear, pull out the taps, and put the evaporator away.