Normal naughtiness

This morning I spent twenty minutes chasing a giggling Catherine around the room trying to get her ready to go out! Now the steroids are coming out of my daughter's system, I am starting to see her great personality again, even it takes ages to get her ready to go anywhere.

It made me think about all those times we as parents get frustrated and even annoyed at some of our children's behaviour. I'm sure other parents of small children can relate to how their antics are at some times really inconvenient. How bizarre it seems, then, that I should be so happy that she was doing something that would have frustrated me before her illness. But I was happy, and when she ran and hid herself in her bed rather than get dressed, I was quite happy to go in and see a heap of bedclothes shaking with her laughter.

Catherine also went to the park today with her friend and they played together on the swings and the climbing frames. This is the first time Catherine has attempted to climb anything for ages, so it was good to see. However, she fell and grazed her knee and for the first time I felt like an overprotective mother! Thoughts that raced through my mind were 'Do I have any anaesthetic cream at home? I don't want that to get infected' and 'How many platelets does she have in her blood if it starts to bleed and needs to clot?'. Daft things that wouldn't have bothered me at all in the past, but seem all the more unknown because of her condition. Catherine, on the other hand, just got up, dusted herself down, and got on with the important business of playing.

Tomorrow we are going to the hospital for another lumbar punch and more chemotherapy. Catherine will be having an anaesthetic again and will not be able to eat from 5am tomorrow morning until the procedure is complete (after 10am). She is quite nervous about going to hospital tomorrow because she says the anaesthetic 'makes her feel wobbly afterwards'. She doesn't like the feeling and doesn't like the anaesthetic cream they put on her portacath. She said she would like to try the spray instead, so maybe we will have a try at this tomorrow.