Worst. Clinic visit. Ever

Well, we went to the new clinic on Wednesday for labs. We changed our finger poke day so that Logan could have the same medical assistant, Melissa, as she no longer works on Thursdays. He was a little skeptical about the new place, but was reassured by all the familiar faces. His regular nurses, the medical assistant, front office staff, and physician assistant all made the transition smooth. The new protocol is that they send down the labs to the hospital's lab, so we do not get instant results. So, later we received a phone call and learned that he passed (just barely) with enough to escalate his dose for the chemo visit today.

That leads us to today. I will not get into my day, all I will say as that it was an annoying waste of time. I had to get up extra early, leave the house before the kids even woke up, and do a few other things that I will not rant about, because this blog is about Logan and his fight. But, in all this, I forgot his EMLA (numbing) cream that I usually put on his port before going to the clinic. I was running late, so did not have time to stop in and get it. So that started everything off wrong. We had the nurse practitioner, who does not see Logan often. She asked us several questions regarding how he did after his last treatment, but then seemed to not believe us. We told her how he has a much harder time after the spinal chemos and it makes him sick, etc. She kept telling us that it was the higher dose of medication in his port and not the spinal. Again, we told her that he always has a hard time after those, and it was definitely the spinal. I still did not get the impression that she believed us. Why would she? It's not like we have been with him every step of the way these last 8 months, and know how he reacts to the various treatments. Then, we did not have our usual nurse. She is usually there on Fridays, but was off today. We had a nurse that Logan rarely sees, and has not accessed his port in a really long time (months). Logan had the usual reaction to the mask (nausea) and vomited in his mask before they even tried to access. Then the different nurse poked him three times in an attempt to access his port, before we said stop at that point. She then went to get another nurse, who is more familiar with Logan and he is more comfortable with who accomplished it in one smooth try. Thank you Shannon. The pharmacy said that Logan had to get the Zofran orally vs IV now, so we did that. He took it no problem, but he had his usual reaction to the saline flushes and threw that up too. All in all, there were four pokes, and he threw up three times. The only good thing about the visit today was that it is his last treatment before maintenance. We made it. He did it. We made it through the toughest part, and all without any hospital readmissions.

After all of that, we asked Logan what he wanted for dinner. Anything he wanted to go get, cook, etc. So we went out for Noodles and then even added on an extra treat of ice cream. Here is a picture of Logan in his PJs after we came home from dinner. As you can see, he has recovered nicely. As I told him so many times this afternoon and evening: he is my superhero, and we are so proud of him.