Tuesday 5th October, 2010

I know it's been 3 weeks since my last blog. Sorry about that. We've been extremely busy with all sorts of things.
Oh my God - what have we done!! The kitchen renovation is in full swing. Murray and I started our 5 weeks leave on Wed 22 September. In the past 2 weeks we have packed up the kitchen and set up a temporary kitchen in the study and had a garage sale to get rid of some items and junk. We have about 50 square metres of flooring to replace. Murray has used the hammer drill to pull up the tiles from the floor. He did this over 3 days in shifts of a 3 or so hours a time. What a job!! however if we thought that was bad, we needed to then hire a concrete grinder to get rid of the glue and tile residue. What a mess - we had concrete dust billowing out of the house, it looked like it was on fire! At times Murray and I couldn't see a thing in the house. The machine was hooked up to a vacuum cleaner however it really didn't seem to do that much to help clean up. It took days to clean up all the dust. I had to sugar soap all the walls and the floor has been swept, vacuumed and mopped countless times.
The kitchen got ripped out this morning. They had given us till next Monday to lay the new floating laminate floor however we have since discovered that we cannot lay this under the island bench as planned. So we will need to wait until the cabinets go in to lay the floor. That's okay because I need to paint the family room in the meantime. Hopefully in the long run all this hard work will be worthwhile.

Luke recovered from the chemo overdose. Chemo ended up being on hold for 2 weeks and he recommenced the cycle on 20th Sept. The doctors decided to ditch the 2nd lot of cytarabine as he'd already had this. He hasn't been doing that much as he has been feeling really tired and lethargic, after walking 50m he feels like he's run a marathon. He's been neutropenic however his bloods have been hanging in there and he hasn't needed any more transfusions. With all of the work going on at home, he has spent the past 5 nights staying at his Aunty's house to avoid all of the dust. He had the house to himself as Heidi and the family went to the coast for a little mini break during the school holidays. We've been ringing up to see how he's going and he's been coming home to see the nurse to give blood samples and to eat and get supplies. Amy also has ended up staying at her other Aunty's house (Nat) and spending time with her cousin Emma. They have both come back home today.

Luke finished this cycle of chemo on Saturday. Luke and Murray went in to see the specialist today and find out what the plan is from here. He now gets to have a 3 week break before going back to the specialist to see whether he needs to have a bone marrow biopsy and when he will be starting the next maintenance chemo cycle. At this stage it could start up again around his 18th birthday on the 28th October. That's a bit mean however he will at least get a good break. Hopefully his bloods will recover in the next week and he'll no longer be neutropenic and be able to get out and about. I need to start thinking about what we are going to do for his 18th. He'll probably do something with his friends and something separate for the family. As mentioned in the last blog we are planning on going up to Sydney on the 16th October for the Motor Show and Fame. So all being well Luke will be okay by then and we'll have a nice time away.

Mum is till connected to the catheter. Unfortunately when they tried again it still didn't work and they discovered she actually still had a very bad infection. So she has been back on antibiotics to clear that and the doctor is trying to get her in to a urologist to try and get to the bottom of the problem. She is however much better than she had been.

I'll probably not blog for another 3 weeks as Luke will not have any treatment for a while.