Delaydiation

Pablo's body mold. Once he is asleep, five people gently lift his body and place it in this mold.

This is the radiation machine in the test lab. The real one is MUCH bigger.

We love CHLA. They are always looking out for us. Jo Ann noted today that we get at least one phone call a day from someone at the hospital. It's usually someone offering us an earlier slot in the oncology clinic or the CT lab. Today's call was from the scheduler in the radiation oncology lab; she had a 7:15 a.m. slot, which we exchanged for our 9 a.m. We'd always—always—rather be the first ones in the door. Because we live close and wake up early anyway, this is never a prob for us.

Jo Ann will drive Grady to school in the morning, and Pablo and I will cruise over to CHLA to get his zap on. His port is accessed, and we know what we're doing now, so we should be able to get out of there within an hour. It's amazing how fast Pablo adapts to all of this. I guarantee he will be excited to go to radiation by the time the 11th treatment rolls around on September 29.

A funny story about this morning. The anesthetists had just come into the prep room to get Pablo when out of nowhere, the lights dimmed, went out briefly, and came back on. The computers followed suit. There were beeps and blips happening all over the joint. A power surge had rolled through the hospital. I've never seen this kind of thing in a giant institution. Hospitals, airports, prisons, military bases have redundant circuits to protect from that sort of thing. Technoredundance aside, it happened. And, yknow, the radiation machine runs on a giant computer, which, like your laptop, needed a restart before it could spray lasers into our little boy's abdomen. So, our first trip to get Pablo's tummy zapped was a giant case of delaydiation.

The surge delayed us an hour or so. During the wait, Pablo dominated a couple games of Uno. Luck for us chemo doesn't make him want to gamble.

He woke up from the procedure quite well. An hour after returning home, he was back in the swing of things.

OK, it's time for bed. Good night!