Daley Ponderings

Warning: I'm feeling better now, but the following post pretty accurately how I felt for most of today.

After a good appointment in Hillsboro, they still wanted us to go to a pediatric dentist who was familiar with chemo/transplant issues, so Heather headed up to Dartmouth this morning in the snow.

She slipped off the road, thankfully pretty slowly, and hopefully just damaged the plastic front bumper, but there might be some more significant damage.  The police had the car towed to a nearby garage and we picked it up on the way home (and did you know that they make 3 and 5 foot long zip ties?  I stopped by a hardware store on the way to be able to temporarily put the car back together.  We'll have it checked out at our mechanic tomorrow or Thursday to see what the plan is.

But, back to the dentist - she was much more sympathetic than the Boston dentist, her daughter had a bone marrow transplant so she understands a lot of what we are going through.  (And she is adding to all the people we've met over the last couple months who all say basically the same thing, "oh yeah, Boston's Children's is <a disaster, horrendous scheduling, no communication with any other doctors, etc>".  They also say that BCH is great medically, and the administrative stuff is usually better once we get admitted, though they all say how amazingly bad they communicate with Dana Farber, despite working with them all the time.  I do wonder if they understand how universally bad people think of them.

 Anyway, the Dartmouth dentist had even more things she wants to do as far as fillings and caps/crowns, etc. though at least she doesn't think currently (prior to seeing the x-rays, since Boston still hasn't released them yet) that we need to remove any teeth.  I do wonder if she will change her mind once she sees the x-rays.  She did explain that leukemia has caused her teeth to be weak, and so that is why her teeth are worse than the other kids.

It is all pretty overwhelming and I skipped out on Grace's dressing change (it started to pull up last night; the dressing she got from Boston isn't as sturdy as the dressings we usually get from Dartmouth) so I could take some time by myself, which was good.  And I even managed to walk directly to the chapel and back again - when we first came to Dartmouth it was so confusing - so I should have hope that we'll eventually figure out the twisty mazes of Boston Children's Hospital.

Another completely amazing thing is that my boss reconfirmed with his boss that "work is optional" and don't let the work or any deadlines put any stress on me, which is just too great.  The main reason I didn't originally go to the dentist appointment this morning was due to work, since I haven't been working that much.

Next appointment is on Friday, where Grace is supposed to get a number of fillings and caps, as well as a CT scan.