OPEN

Over the last couple of days Sam has developed this little game in her head. It’s to see if she can break the record of how many hairs she can pull out in one go. “Look, seven!!” she excitedly yelled at me whilst I was eating my lunch yesterday. This was followed by 3 quick pulls in succession on different parts of her hair and each time she would count how many were in her hand. She almost had this disappointed look on her face as the number of hairs got less and less.

Most of the worry this week has been about childcare (and samcare) and how much time I should take off from work after Sam has her next session of chemotherapy. It’s a hard call to make because of the unpredictability of the whole thing. So far both jobs have been amazingly supportive and have been very flexible with the time off that I’ve had so far, but that can only go on for so long. I’m going to have to start taking time off unpaid soon, but to be honest, I’ve got more important things to worry about right now. We know that Sam will get knocked out quite a bit after the next session. This is because her immune system will be more or less wiped out, so we really do have to wrap her in kid gloves afterwards. She’s been quite lucky this last couple of weeks though. Apart from a monster headache and extreme tiredness she’s been relatively unscathed. Over the last few days she’s developed stomach cramps after she eats and she’s found her joints are aching quite a bit (especially at the bottom of her back) but I think that just comes with the territory.

Maddy and Harry are still holding up well and are both being very grown up about the whole situation. They keep asking questions and are up to date with everything that’s happening. We’re trying to keep them fully in the loop and being very open with them. Writing this blog has been very useful because I can see they’ll go off, read it at their own pace, take the information in and then come back and ask questions if they need to know more. Rosie’s too young to know what’s really going on (and Charlie just dribbles a lot) but she knows that mummy’s got a hurty booby and needs to go to the hospital quite a bit. So far they’ve taken everything in their stride, but I’ve got a feeling that things may change for everyone once Sam’s appearance starts to alter and reality kicks in.