It is funny what a three year old catches on to, and how quickly.
- If Lane doesn’t want to deal with someone, who isn’t Amy or myself, he will pretend to be sleeping. He peeks occasionally to see if they have left. If the person stays long enough he will legitimately fall asleep … on accident.
- One of his favorite nurses named Ginger would let him shoot her and anyone in the room with a saline syringe. He likes it so much when he sees someone with one in their hand or pocket he will demand it from them and when they aren’t paying attention shoot them in the back of the head and giggle maniacally.
- He was given a great IV at Star Valley Health by nurse Kaycee. It lasted long enough for him to get his port-a-cath surgically placed in his chest. While in primary children’s he would point to his IV and enunciate far above his usually diction, “NO POKES, THIS ONE”. He was so possessive of the little 22 gauge IV in his right arm that he didn’t want us to remove it, or any bandage for that matter. We had to keep pointing to his bump on his chest and name it his new no poke in order to allow the nurse to remove it.
- Even if Lane is grumpy and hasn’t made eye contact with someone the whole time they have been in the room as they go to leave If you tell Lane, “Don’t smile at them.” He will give a huge cheesy grin. I think it is his version of kill them with kindness.
- He also finds great joy in making nurses and Doctors smell his “stinky” feet. The more disgusted they are the more he is proud of himself.
- While an Inpatient we had his night nurse introduced to us as a “ninja nurse, you won’t even know she is there.” I think because he heard this he slept with one eye open. Any time she would get close he would yell “no! My dad will do it” Referring to taking his armpit temperature and changing his diaper (fun fact: after a Chemo infusion a child wearing a diaper should be changed every 2 hours so their skin in the diaper isn’t overly exposed to excreted chemo). Lane will not let anyone but Amy or myself change his diapers. At 2 AM I woke up to a standoff between ninja nurse and Lane. She had snuck in and removed his pajama bottoms, but he had a death grip on both pull tabs of his diaper and was screaming “where is my dad!?” The stunned nurse looked at me as if to say I’m so sorry I was trying to let you sleep.
- Lane hates surprises. No matter how unpleasant; it is much better to let him know what the plan is. There is no ask forgiveness rather than permission in his world he holds a serious grudge. His undeclared motto is tell me what is going to happen and then don’t dawdle, get it over with.
- Before he got sick he would carry around a quarter in a clenched fist all day long. Now, I sanitize my loose change and leave it in his reach across the room to motivate him to walk around on his unsteady legs and not just sit all day. We clean out his pockets at the end of the day and put it on a ledge he can only see from his changing table. He is really proud of his collection.
- After the second trip there, he refers to the Holiday Inn Express Downtown Salt lake City as “Lane’s Hotel.” He can recognize it from a few blocks away. Amy asked him why is it Lane’s Hotel. With no hesitation he told her that the letters on the sign say it is.
- The first week of being an inpatient at Primary children’s our main motivator for Lane was giving him Dr. Pepper. When he woke up from his first surgery sedation his first bleary words out of a hoarse little voice box was, “where’s my docta peppa?”
- When he woke up from his second sedation, the nurse came to get Amy and me. When we came close enough to see his little cubicle in recovery we noticed it was packed with nurses. We panicked. When the nurses noticed us they turned around saw the look on our faces and sheepishly said we just came to see how cute he is. He was flirting with all of them. He disconnected his blood pressure tubing and was swinging it around his head like a lasso and yelling “Yeeeehawww!”
- We have had similar extra visitors at almost every glass door room we have been in. He is like an exotic fish.
- When he was on a steroid called Dexamethazone morning and night he was hungry around the clock and gained nearly 10 pounds in just a few weeks from 29 to 38 lbs. nearly a 30% weight gain. He would wake up every 2 hours and tell me, “I Hungy” I became a short order junk food chef. He would sometimes change his order mid preparation between top ramen, mac and cheese, and french fries. Occasionally he would eat all three that I had prepared before he would go back to sleep. It would make you nauseous watching a little body eat that much food in one sitting.