Inevitably Isita is back in hospital. Marta brought her in after lunch on Sunday. She started getting warm the night before, but did not reach the trigger temperature of 38.5 celcius which requires an immediate trip to St Mary’s. We gave her calpol and hoped without expectation that it would go away. Poor thing, her resistance is so low after the chemotherapy, one might as well try to hold back the tide with a mop. The lovely community nurse came,  wormed the story out of us, and apologetically sent us in.

The good news is that Isita has remained bright and cheerful, she hasn’t lost much weight thanks to the feeds through her nasal-gastric tube, which are going very well after the dreadful struggle to get them started, and we have a room with a view over Paddington Basin.

However, her temperature is now spiking above 39 degrees every six hours as the calpol wears off. The nights on Grand Union ward are tiring, not only because of the frequent bleeping of the pumps, but also because we hear everything in the corridor; the alarm that repeats every time someone calls a nurse, and last night the furious shrieking of another wretched child that went on and on. Isita yells when she has injections, but not like that, thank God.

Our little break at home was blissful. We went to the park, had lunch all together round the kitchen table, played games. I hope we’ll get Isita back to that very soon. She needs to start getting better today or tomorrow if we are to be out for Easter.