Our little family just returned from a 4 day trip to Atlanta to visit Robbie's brother, Bryan. Bryan has been battling Mantle Cell Lymphoma since January and started his 6th and most difficult round of chemo yesterday.
We dropped Hawkins off at my parents on Sunday and headed up to spend some time with Bryan without having to think about bottles, diapers or naps. It was great to be able to go out to dinner and shop around and be able to solely focus on Bryan and hear about the process he has been going through. It has been hard for us to be up there face-to-face since we are 4 hours away and have a baby and Robbie only gets 5 days vacation TOTAL in one year.
We joined Bryan at a friends' house Sunday for dinner and had a nice relaxing home cooked meal. It was nice to meet 2 of his friends and drink some wine! Monday we accompanied Bryan to Emory hospital to get an infusion. He had a cold last week and this infusion is to help boost his immune system. The bad part is that is takes several hours, so he was glad to have some company :) Only one of us could actually sit back there with him, so I took the first shift and Robbie took the second.
I was able to leave and run some errands that afternoon and cannot describe the freedom I felt to be in Atlanta able to go anywhere I wanted. I left that parking garage almost confused that I could go eat lunch by myself anywhere and then do anything I wanted! I don't mean to make this about me since the trip was about Bryan, but it was seriously a vacation for this SAHM. Everyone knows I love my precious little boy, but you forget what it is like to not be on a schedule and not be tied to a diaper bag and car seat. I ate lunch at Jason's Deli (one of my fav's) and then did some shopping at Toys R Us, Ulta, and of course Tory Burch. It was glorious.
After I hit those stores it was time to meet the boys back at Bryan's apartment. We left Bryan to rest and went back to the place we were staying to rest ourselves. We stayed with friends, Mary Catherine and Blake in their new fabulous house off Howell Mill. It was the perfect location near Bryan's apartment and they made it so comfortable for us.
The day got even better when everyone went to eat Mexican together! (We don't have a good mexican restaurant in T'ville, so I was craving it) Sarah and my sister also met us, so it was a fun crowd.
This is where things got complicated. We were supposed to head home early Tuesday morning, but our two day trip turned into four days when Rick (their Dad) could not come from Charleston to be with Bryan. He was planning to drive down on Tuesday to help get Bryan in the hospital for his chemo. Well, on Monday his Dad (Robbie's Grandpa, who is 93) went into the ER with phenomena (in Charleston). Wow, what a mess! It was God's perfect timing that we were with Bryan and able to stay to get him checked into the hospital and started on the chemo.
This round is particularly scary because it is a new regimen. Bryan had a pet scan 2 weeks ago that showed his doctor that the previous 5 rounds of chemo had not worked as well as expected - a complete disappointment to everyone. Now he has to do this new "intense" form of chemo to try to beat this cancer! We wanted to be there for the first part to make sure there were no serious side effects.
Bryan was checked in Tuesday afternoon (I won't even go into how incredibly inefficient that process was. Let's just say we spent the entire day waiting around.) He finally started receiving a preliminary drug around 7pm and we headed home around 8pm to get some rest. We packed up this morning and went straight to the hospital at 8am. They were administering the most intense drug at that time and Robbie wanted to be sure to be there in case anything went wrong. Bryan did great and didn't have any sort of reaction at all!
After we were sure he was doing well on the new chemo and ok to be by himself we started to head home. It was horrible to leave him there in the hospital alone, but Robbie had to get back to work and we both had to get home to our baby!
This was the longest I have EVER been away from Hawkins and it was killing me. I knew he was in great hands with my parents, but by day 4 I was going crazy to see him. I called my Mom approximately 42 times a day to check on them almost drove her crazy. She assured me that they were doing great and he was just perfect. He slept all night every night and took pretty good naps for his Honey. He didn't even miss us!
I can barely even describe what happened when we arrived to pick him up. He was asleep, so we had to wait on him to wake up. As soon as I heard him move around I ran in there to get him. Well...I should have remembered that he needs a few minutes to wake up, but we all ran in there and it scared him half to death. He was still half asleep and started crying! He only wanted my Mom and would not even go to me or Robbie...for like 10 minutes! He laid his head on her shoulder and looked like he didn't know who we were. It was horrible and almost brought me to tears. I know he was just confused, but it hurt! He was back to normal very quickly and then so glad to be back home when we arrived.
We really enjoyed spending time with Bryan and getting to visit with some friends in Atlanta. As always - it is so nice to be home again!
Please keep Bryan in your prayers as we battles this horrible cancer.
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