Day +15: Who Knew Lunch Could Be So Exciting?

A much better day today, filled with good food, great friends and plenty of excitement. Who knew an innocent trip out to lunch with friends could evoke so much excitement?!

Our gorgeous London-based friends Niall and Loey are currently on holidays in Sydney. They let us know a few weeks ago that they would be here and wanted to catch up with us. In light of Sean's transplant, they wanted to take us out somewhere in Randwick, and we arranged to have them meet us at the hospital to see Sean.

We'd arranged with our ward granny Jenny to come and look after Sean while we were out to lunch, and sure enough, Jenny arrived in our room at 11am, ready and willing to help. Sean was growing tired by this point, and with Niall and Loey on the ground floor waiting to be met, Jonathan tucked Sean in to bed, snug as a bug in a rug, and Sean drifted off to sleep.

I went and met Niall and Loey and brought them up to the room. They looked through the window for a minute to see a sleeping Sean, before we headed off to have lunch. Loey told us that she had originally made a booking at the Montpellier Public House, but apparently, lunches were not profitable enough for them and they stopped serving lunch at the end of last week. The Montpellier Public House would have been a short walk from the hospital for us, but since they were't opened, Niall and Loey decided to take us to the Bronte Road Bistro.

They weren't opened for lunch either.

On our way down to the Bronte Road Bistro, we stopped on the side of the road to get a better sense of where we were going. It'd been a couple of years since Niall and Loey was in Sydney last, and while they thought they knew where they were going, they wanted to be sure, so we pulled over to look at the map. Niall parked the car and we all started looking for the address, when we heard a knock on the window. A woman was motioning for us to wind down the window, to let us know that Niall had rammed her car.

Niall jumped out of the car to deal with the woman, and with all our windows up due to the rain, we didn't hear what was said. From what I could see, the woman was making out like Niall reversed at high speed into her car on purpose. Ever the gentleman, Niall swapped details with the woman, took photos of the damage, and got back in the car. By this time, we'd found the route we needed to take, so we drove off.

Niall showed us the photos later - there wasn't a scratch on their rental car, and the dent on the woman's number plate that she claimed was damaged by Niall's high speed ram looked more like damage done by a tow bar than a rubbery bumper. There was such minimal damage to the number plate - if it was me, I certainly would not be involving the insurance company to claim on the tiny dent.

With the Bronte Road Bistro closed, we ended up having lunch at the Bellagio Café. We'd driven past it earlier, and since it looked nice and was opened, we ventured in. We were pretty hungry, so after a short look at the menu, we ordered sandwiches and drinks before settling in to catch up. We talked about Sean for a bit, but it was more interesting to hear about what Niall and Loey had been up to in London, their travels and their future travel plans to France, and on their first ever visit to Hong Kong, their stop before landing in Sydney. The banter was easy and full of laughs, and it was really lovely spending a couple of hours with them.

Time flew by, and before we knew it, it was almost 2pm, and Jonathan and I felt we really should get back to the hospital. Niall and Loey came up again to see Sean, who was awake and full of fun by the time we got back, and he waved and smiled and showed Niall and Loey how well he was doing. They stayed for a little while, before heading off to continue their holiday plans.

Thank you, Niall and Loey. We had a thoroughly enjoyable time - not only did you take us to a lovely place for lunch, and provide such sparkling company with adult conversation, you took me away from the hospital and drove me the furthest I'd been in 3 weeks. And we love the Bobby Bear!

It was lovely to be out of the hospital with Jonathan, doing something normal and fun. The little trip recharged my batteries and I felt ready to face the rest of our stay in hospital.

Speaking of which, there was every chance we could be outta here sooner than we expected. MUCH than we expected. During rounds this morning, Dr Trahair was very pleased with Sean's progress, both from a physical point of view as well as from the blood test results he was getting from the labs. In fact, he was so happy with Sean that he asked for all of Sean's intravenous medications to be switched over to oral intake (through the nasogastric tube). This was the first step to get him ready for discharge and recovery at home.

Dr Trahair also reduced Sean's morphine, as Sean seemed to be coping well with his aches and pains. Ketamine was now off the table. Hurray for that! We felt vindicated for holding off on the extra pain relief - we were aiming for one less puncture hence one less line, and we got it.

If everything continued to go well, we were looking at a possibility of going home in a couple of weeks. That was how well Sean was doing. However, there were a number of things that still needed to happen before we were sent packing. One of the next steps was to get Sean to start eating again, so later this week, the team would increase the feeds to 50mL per hour for 12 hours overnight, and stop the tube feeding for the other 12 hours, with a view to Sean relearning what "hungry" felt like, thus be encouraged to eat during the day.

So the quiet optimism about a much earlier departure date was slowly gathering momentum. I was still cautious about getting too excited. We were now in that danger period when Graft-Versus-Host Disease (GVHD) would most commonly occur, so Jonathan and I need to be very vigilant about spotting the symptoms, such as skin rashes and blood in Sean's poo.

As if Sean knew things were looking up, he was in fine form all day long. We were lucky enough to have Verena the music therapist come by and play music with Sean again, and Sean enjoyed some dancing and singing with her. Kylie also came by with a new craft activity - sticking cut up pieces of cellophane on to the sticky side of Contact book covering. Kylie had drawn shapes on the non-sticky side, and it was Sean's job to stick the little pieces of cellophane down to create a stained glass effect. Very very clever - what a great idea for future birthday parties!

Sean was very playful all afternoon. He discovered the joys of bouncing on his bottom - he'd stand up, and fall down on his bottom, and giggle. He kept doing this over and over again, and it was so funny to watch. Sean wiggled and danced to the ads on the TV, and happily played with his toys and blankets in his cot.

In case you were wondering, we didn't need to have words with our next door neighbour's relatives today. There were still plenty of visitors, but they were all waiting outside the ward in the hallway. Small groups of 4 to 5 people came to the teenager's door at a time, and each group visited for a very short period of time before swapping places with the next small group. No one blocked our doorway, and they were mindful they didn't block the corridor either. I was much happier to see this much more considerate arrangement.

Around 4pm, one of the doctors on our team came around to let us know that Sean's IgG antibodies levels were low. It had been 3 weeks since we thought about Sean's IgG levels, and when Andy noticed that they had dropped, he immediately ordered some more Intragam for Sean. Andy had hoped the transfusion would happen this afternoon, but it will now happen tomorrow. No worries. No rush.

Sean was getting so good at falling asleep by himself these days. Granted, we were always in the room with him, sitting not far away, but considering it used to take a bottle of formula and often a lot of shushing and patting, all Sean needed now was to be wrapped up fairly tightly like a little sausage, and he would drift off to sleep. He made such a cute snug little bug in a bunny rug.

There are more episodes of Chuck awaiting my attention. Simone has everything under control, so I'm going to stick my headphones on and enjoy my TV show.