Hi everyone… Well you know what time of the week it is: time for the Hits…

1.  The last day of school!  Hooray.  I’m saying that now, because I think we all know that by this time next week this very first Hit might be the reason why the Friday blog will be re-named Shitwave Alison.  But for now, I’m excited… Today is the Easter Festival of Fun at school, which will be followed closely by the Noosa Carnival of Crying, as Coco gets her blood taken ready for cross-matching and a transfusion next week.  (Happy holidays Kid: here you go, have some needles and a stay in hospital.)

2. On the back of that whinge, of course a massive hit for us is BLOOD DONORS.  You guys rock.  You do it even though you don’t have to.  You do it even though you’d probably rather not.  And in your doing it, you keep my kid alive.  So thank you.  More than I can ever say or repay.

If you don’t already donate, or if you haven’t done so in a while, you can check out your eligibility online here, or call 13 95 96

3.  The best chocolate shop going around…Chocl’arte.  It’s at the Harbour at Tewantin and the ladies there are unreal.  They made me up packs for the teachers with an Easter Theme.  (I’m such a doofus I forgot to take pics of them all before we gave them out, but here’s the one for Liam’s drum teacher.)

YUM

If you are a Noosonian, pop in and have a squiz.  That Harbour is a great spot to have a cuppa and a little gifty-style shop.  Just beautiful in the morning, with the added bonus of an ALL WHITE shop.  If only we didn’t have two little dirtbags living here…(and then we have the kids too..)

4.  This sign:

This week has been a bit full on, with the impending sense of doom transfusion, so sometimes it’s good to have things in your inbox or your camera roll, that make you smile.  I took this pic on holiday at Evans Head, where I said Bon Voyage to my buddy who is off on a “trip around”.  I don’t know when she’ll be back, (hopefully only a year), and bittersweet as it was, we had a ripper of a time, and even managed a bit of Veuve to split up in style.  Anyway, seeing all of those high pedestrians makes me laugh.  Good times.

5.  One of my Interweb mates, Eden.  I love her and I love her beautiful, honest writing.  She has had some bumps lately, but it sounds like she is getting some of her mojo back.  Anyway, I’m advertising on her blog this month, so hopefully some of you are reading this due to that.  If you are, welcome!  Kick off your shoes and stay a while….

And to my RRs, if you aren’t already an Edenophile, pop over to Edenland and have yourself an experience of beautiful writing.  Take tissues.

So that’s it… Happy Weekend everyone… 

What are YOUR hits?  Don’t be shy…

…From The Ashers xx

***As usual, a boring disclaimer… This is not a sponsored post… No chocolate was harmed or given as a freebie in the making of this post.  WHEN? WHEN WILL I GET FREE SHIT?

Today was transfusion day.

My Girl

By the time you read this it will all be over, and my girl, will be tucked up tight in bed, dreaming of who knows what.  She usually stirs quite a bit, this night.  If sleep is the subconscious downloading, then I guess she has loads to down.

When she was a bub, we would have fractious nights in the lead up to a transfusion, but the night after was always the worst for me.  Leaving the hospital that night was always wonderful.  I’d sink into the seat of the car, Coco all bundled into her capsule, and I’d just sit.  I would bask.  In the relief and the relief and the relief.  There was no other time in my month-or-so quite like it.  In that car, at that moment, we were as far away from the next transfusion as we could possibly be.  Every second from then on moved us closer to the next one.  So I would bask.  I would waste some of those precious moments, allowing the soothing to trickle over me, knowing that the night ahead would be long and strange.  That she would wake and cry and stir and wake.  She would need feed on top of feed to try and rehydrate after the mid-transfusion diuretic.  Nappies soaking.  Mind churning.

Things are easier now of course.  We have grown used to the process, and the procedures.  She told me today that if she looks at the cannula before it goes in she feels “all funny in her tummy” and that even though she can’t feel the blood actually going in, it hurts if we move the tubing too much.  These are things I haven’t known before.  So perhaps it will get easier still.

She has a good memory, my girl.  She recalls all the parts of these two days.

On the first day we get the blood taken for cross-matching, and she remembers the time her skin got pinched and drawn into the tourniquet and had to be pulled out.  She remembers the time blood went spurting everywhere.  And she remembers all the times, like yesterday, when it takes one or two or three attempts to get that sample out.  So sometimes she might cry when it doesn’t seem necessary.  Because she remembers well.

On the second day we receive the blood.  We present to the hospital and we wait until hand-over is done and rounds are completed and then, at last, it is our turn.  She is on edge until then, my girl.  She knows what is coming, and that no amount of playing in the little park, or watching the fish in their tank will blunt that feeling of foreboding, or the feeling of that needle piecing the plump baby flesh, just near her dimpled knuckles.

She remembers well, my girl, so she tells the doctor that her right hand is the best one for puncture.  “This vein, right here”,  she says, tracing the blue feint on the dorsum of her hand.  They hear but don’t listen, so the left hand is tried first.  Then back to the right.  Usually she starts crying at a reasonable volume, well before they take the first stab.  I lie on top of her, and hold her arm firm at the shoulder, to make sure she doesn’t move, but she never does.  Even as an infant, when they wanted to wrap her up like a cat in case of writhing, she never did.  I know without looking when the needle goes in, and then, when they blow that first vein, as her screams spike and spike.  He eyes widen, as big as the moon, as if she is surprised, still, at how it feels.

This day, it was different.

Earlier on, the music therapist had spent some time with us, singing to Coco, playing and showing her instruments.  Calming her.  She asked Coco’s favourite song, and I said: The Lion Sleeps Tonight, regretting it instantly, as the therapist played that stupid song over and over, those wimmewehs scratching on the blackboard of my jangled nerves.  But it soothed my girl.  She snuggled into my arms, and as that beautiful hippy played and played, and it was true that music is a salve for the soul.

When we went into the treatment room we played the wimmewehs on the iPod, and as that first vein was blown, she cried, but perhaps not as much as she used to.  Calmer or not, there’s only so much sleeping one lion can do, so we changed to Green Spandex.  The funeral song, from the when that feels like yesterday.  We stared into each other’s eyes, my girl and I.  I think she was expecting me to cry, and I know I was expecting her to, both for different reasons.   Blue eyes locking onto brown.  We couldn’t be more different sometimes, my girl and I, but we held our eyes, and we held our strength.  I’m sure we both felt like weeping, for some reasons different, and some the same, but we didn’t.  We breathed deeply and we held each other and we waited for the pain to pass.  It hurt.  But we got through another little bit.

Sometimes we couldn’t be more alike, my girl and I.

Blue eyes and brown

If you have already donated blood in the last 3 months, Thank you, From The Ashers.

If you haven’t, you could call 13 95 96 to find out how.

A little thing with a little thing…

We have a little girl who has a rare little thing called Pyruvate Kinase Deficiency.  It doesn’t sound like such a big thing, just a little deficiency, but it turns out pyruvate kinase is kind of important.  It turns out that if you have red blood cells without it, your spleen breaks them down, and if it breaks down enough of them, you end up anaemic.  So every three or four months or so, our rare little girl, with her rare little thing needs a bit of a top up.  With blood.  Maybe blood from you.

She always says she’s fine, and that she doesn’t need a transfusion, but sometimes when you’re six years old, the fear of the needles just might sway your thinking.  We always ask her if she thinks she’s ready for a transfusion, knowing full well she is, hoping that the day will come when she is able to weigh up the advantages and realise that she does need the blood.

We haven’t gotten there yet.

So this morning we made the decision.  The thing that parents all over the world have to do every day.  To make a choice that your kid will cry and sob and plead for you to change your mind about, but one, that as the parent you know is in your kid’s best interests.  It might be about getting some kind of surgery or medical procedure, it might be about eating vegetables, being home before dark, going to bed at a reasonable time.

Sometimes being parent is fun and easy and things just seem to flow along without incident.

And then sometimes it can be a bit hard.

Sometimes your little girl will look at you with her big blue eyes, her sclera all yellowy-green from the jaundice that heralds the end of this cycle of blood, with tears running down her golden little cheeks, and say, “Please Mummy, can I go to school today? I don’t want to go and get the blood cross-matched.  My haemoglobins are fine.”

And your heart breaks open just a little bit.  Partly because you know you can’t grant her wish of going to school today, like all the other carefree children her age, who right now, might have as their biggest worry whether to take the red or the green handball to play with at little-lunch, but also partly because you know she already knows too much about the workings of a hospital.

But mostly because you know that this is not the last time she will have a transfusion.  She will have them again and again and again.

Hopefully one day it won’t be this hard.

The Red Cross ALWAYS needs blood. They don’t need it one day.  

WE need it today.  

You can call 13 95 96 to make an appointment.

I have a kid, who, by her own admission is the “third smartest” in her class.  She knows this because, “In our class, the first smartest is Shaylah, and the second smartest is Stella.  Then there’s a few other kids, then me.  Third.”

So yeah, she’s nailed that one…

This third-smartest kid has had a big week.

She has an unusual type of anaemia which results in her needing blood transfusions every couple of months or so, and at the moment we are getting close to transfusion time.  So it means that her haemoglobin is somewhere around the point where most adults wouldn’t even be able to get out of bed.

And still she goes on.

You may have heard me whining about the fact that we lost her iPad back here. She had an iPad, not to play Minecraft on (Although you may be forgiven for thinking this was its sole function), but to complete her writing tasks at school, because when you’re knackered, sometimes even pushing the pencil along the little blue lines is a bit too much.

This week she got the ‘Class Member of the Week’ award at school.  Without the iPad (that is presumably still in the loving care of its new owners), and with a good old fashioned pencil and notebook, she wrote “my longest story ever, even longer than my other longest one ever.”

So I guess it was long.

Her award said this:

“Never give up.”

And she doesn’t.  Whilst all the other children her age have long mastered the monkey bars and have moved on to other things, bigger challenges, things higher and faster and more complicated, she goes out every lunchtime, swings, grabs, and gets to the first rung.  And falls.  Then tries again.  And falls.  She has blisters all over her tiny little hands, and bruises all over her knees.  And still she goes on.

Until this week, when she made it all the way.  Just once.  And she was so proud.  I wish you could’ve seen her beam.

You CAN see the blisters

I’m thinking maybe we can all learn something from this third-smartest kid.  Sometimes you don’t have to be the cleverest or the fastest or the most capable.  Sometimes, even though you may be the least-smartest, or the smallest, or the most tired, or the one that things just seem harder for, you can achieve greatness.  If you never give up.

How about you?  Do you give up?

What cool things did your kids achieve this week?