Visiting at the Cancer Care Clinic

Dear friends,

All the news from here is good: Harry's been fever-free for almost 48 hours by now. His medical folks would like to keep monitoring him, though, so he will spend tonight in the hospital (with his Daddy) and come home tomorrow. Cynthia sent the message that follows a few weeks ago, but it still gives you a bit of look into life at the Children's Cancer Clinic ...

Hey, and for everyone who didn't know, tomorrow (Thursday, May 1st) is Cynthia's birthday!

Friday April 18th 2008

When we are at home, Harry goes to the Cancer Care Manitoba Children’s clinic once or twice a week (Tuesdays and Fridays) for a check up. A check-up involves a blood test to check his counts, weight and measurement to see how he is growing (making sure he is not losing weight), and a visit with his oncologist, Dr. Stoffman. If needed, he can have a blood transfusion at the clinic, and the nurses can change his central line dressing and clean and flush his central line lumens.

Our first visit to the clinic was on Harry’s first birthday, Friday April 4th. We ended up having to stay in the clinic pretty much all day, from 9:30 am till 6:00 pm, as Harry needed a transfusion that day. That being said, Cancer Care Manitoba is housed in a beautiful new building on the HSC (Health Sciences Centre) hospital campus and the Children’s clinic is beautiful, not at all like a hospital, and a wonderful place to stay, if you have to be at a Cancer Care clinic!

They have a great ‘play pit’ in the centre and Harry loved peeking in each of the cupboards to discover what was behind the door. The edge of the pit is just the right height for him to practice standing up too! It was also his nurse Wanda’s birthday on the 4th and she shared some chocolate cake with Harry. Here are some pictures of him playing in the clinic on his birthday, including his ‘cake face’ – his first taste of chocolate!


The next week we had a shorter visit on the 8th and again on the 11th. At our visit on the 11th, Dr. Stoffman felt Harry was doing well enough that we didn’t even need to come back on the 15th – we could wait till the 18th for his pre-admission visit.

Siblings are welcome at the clinic, and encouraged to come to share in their sibling’s experience. A child life specialist runs the clinic, along with several volunteers. So Lydia came along, with Oma, on Friday the 11th, so she could see what a visit to clinic was all about. As well, they have a mock up CT scan with puppets for the children to play with. As Harry was going for his CT scan the next week, this allowed Lydia to see what a CT scanner looked like and to ‘play out’ what a CT scan was all about. Dawn (the child life specialist) is wonderful and helped Lydia through this play.


Lydia had a chance to play with a puppet that has a central line with two lumens just like Harry, give the puppet a CT scan and also hook up an IV to the central line to pretend to give the puppet chemotherapy – all just like Harry. She also met another girl her age, Jordan, whose little sister is being treated at the clinic as well.

This is one of the many ways we are so supported by the team at HSC / Children’s Hospital. Again, we feel so very lucky to live in a province / country that has such a wonderful medical system that all of this is available to us at no charge, just part of our one-tier public medical system!

Love,
Cynthia