Palo Alto -- IVIG Time

It has been a LONG day to say the least... but we made it to Palo Alto. Owen's insurance covers a portion of our travel expenses, so I may have been totally stressed out yesterday when we didn't get our airline tickets until 10pm.  The good news is that everything worked out and we arrived at the airport in plenty of time.  Owen loves to check out the airport shops and found these hilarious bug eye vision glasses.. I considered them for a whole second until I saw the price tag.

We settled on an overpriced pet squishy lizard.  Owen swung him around by his tail the entire wait at the terminal and only hit a few people.  Lucky for him, he's adorable when he apologizes and nobody cared.

We had a pretty uneventful flight, aside from two bathroom breaks and spilled soda... like everywhere!  I may have let him just wear a tshirt and pullup the rest of the flight.  We grabbed some lunch in San Jose and headed off to our rental car making it to our hotel in Palo Alto at noon.  Of course the room wasn't ready yet so we headed off to the RMH to play.

The weather is always perfect in Palo Alto... Owen and I sat on the back patio at the RMH and played for a good hour.

We checked into the Short Stay Unit at 1:00 and headed to our teeny, but PRIVATE infusion room.  This is seriously it.. aside from the bathroom to the left of Owen.  I get to sleep in that cozy chair tonight... we started IVIG around 3pm, so we should be outta here by 4am and checking into the hotel for some real sleep. 

There was a different lady from Child Life here today (not our usual) and she was super nice.  She promised to go get Owen a prize for being brave and to pick up some games for him to play to pass the time.  She worked on some "strategies" to get Owen to stay calm for his IV placement and labs.  I tried to be supportive but knew that singing the ABC song while getting an IV placed was just not gonna happen.  So sure enough.. it took two nurses and myself to pin him down and he was in full out hulk mode as soon as that needle was placed and the digging for the vein began.  It only took two pokes to get a good IV and labs, but man it doesn't get easier!  He just wigs out and then breaks down in tears when it's all over and then he apologizes to the crew for losing his cool.  I noticed that child life disappeared half way through the process.. apparently she got freaked?  She did never come back.  Owen and I took a little walk to the 3rd floor playroom and picked out some superheros and games to keep him busy for the night.  Monopoly Jr was a hit!

Then he watched a little Spiderman and Despicable Me 2.  His request with dinner was a Haagan Daz Ice Cream bar with almonds... seriously?  All they have is the Styrofoam cups with chocolate dairy something unexplained inside of them that looks like ice cream.  I hiked over to the adult side of Stanford and found an awesome Ice Cream vending machine next to the ER with all the Haagan Daz a boy could want.  Major mom points!!

Owen's tray of bacon and grapes just showed up.. time for dinner!  We've had an echo, were seen by our transplant team and it's only 7pm... only nine hours to go.  Please say a little pray that these antibodies remain at zero!  If this is a good one and he remains zero in June for labs, we may get the go ahead to space these out every 90 days.  Two years of monthly infusions is just not fun for a little guy.