Parent Time

Since this is a family thing - I thought that I would add some stuff about what it is like for us to stay here as parents. :) We were lucky that we have both been able to be here. I don't know what I would do without Brent to help take some of the (probably most of) the cranky time and responsibility of helping Aiden feel better. I am so blessed to be married to a man as wonderful as Brent. He is really the anchor for this family and he is the one that can always help Kaitlin, Hailey, Aiden and I feel better, no matter what.

So this is the parent kitchen. The ICS Unit has 24 rooms and at the moment they are all full. One of Aiden's nurses tell me that this unit seems to either be hardly full at all or overflowing. There is a fridge, a microwave and a toaster oven. We will have to get more creative with our meals when we are staying here for the long stay. For this short stay we have been eating in the Cafeteria (the food is really good) and off the complimentary cart for breakfast (bagels, juice, milk, donuts, etc). Brent is set on bringing turkey steaks for the long stay! At least that is one meal out of 84 down :)

This is the "laundry room" and in the same space as the "kitchen". We do our personal laundry as well as the personal items that we brought for Aiden. One thing we found out about Chemo is that since it is a hazardous drug that is eliminated from the body through pee etc and sweat we need to make sure that we double bag the diapers we throw away and double wash all of the laundry Aiden has, especially if he pees/poops out. Good thing I love laundry! (Did you hear the sarcasm?) Since we have been here we have done one load of laundry a day.

This is the parent bathroom. We just found out that we could use Aiden's bathroom though so that has been nice for us (at least for the last couple days we are here). They have a lot of policies that are to keep the patients from being exposed as little as possible to germs etc and so parents are not allowed to use the patient bathrooms unless the children are too little (in diapers) to use them.

This is our bed. Air mattress on the floor. The first night was bad cause everytime we moved it squeaked. That added to the fact that there were vital checks every other second and meds administered through the night it was rough. The second night we put a blanket on the floor and due to exhaustion and our awesome nurse (Jami) who was super quiet when she came in an really on top of things (no beeping alarms) we got much better sleep. It has been pretty comfortable. We were told that for the next stay we should see if they can hook us up with one of the big rooms. We will see what we can do. In the morning we put the air mattress against the wall so it is out of the way. Brent really likes it here cause we keep the room at freezing - at night I have a sheet, fuzzy blanket and hospital (warmed) blanket. Brent sleeps with just a sheet. AAAHHHH the story of our life.