What a week! My last day of work was on Monday.
On Wednesday, Michael, Sylvie and I embarked on our first trip since December 2008—Boca Raton, Florida! We are the only family to NOT have any relatives there although I felt guilty that our accomodations/package included free golf and that my dad wasn’t there to take advantage of it.
Sylvie was as good as a 3 year-old possibly could have been on the plane. She was THRILLED to be taking a trip, flying somewhere else and renting a SILVER car (her favorite car color when playing “the car game”).
We had many reminders that this was a very special trip for our family and that Sylvie is a very special girl indeed. It began with the two giant Ziploc bags filled with refrigerated and non-refrigerated liquid essentials. Next came the BOX of EO Hand Sanitizer cleaning wipes and the scrubbing that we did of our entire row, windows, tray tables, seatbelts.
Sylvie had her own quirks. For example, upon entering any underground parking facility or building like, say, a brand new fancy modern hotel, Sylvie freaks out and thinks it’s a hospital. Once we cleared that up, Sylvie asked if the hotel lobby was like that in “Eloise.”
She was truly ecstatic with the hotel room, as were we. Sylvie ran around, hiding in the sheer curtains, pointing at the ocean and desperate to immediately put on a swimsuit, as were we.
After a makeshift lunch, we headed to the pool and beach where Sylvie continued to be totally fearless rendering us totally fearful. She was equally ecstatic with her tutu-like bikini that my mom got her a year ago although Michael was less than thrilled with the shark-bite scar across Sylvie’s abdomen. At least the scar kind of explains the short hair although twice we had to sort of explain to older kids that Sylvie was a GIRL and why she has short HAIR.
Before dinner, I went to Whole Foods to pick up more “mommy drink” which is the Bolthouse Farms chai protein drink although Sylvie was pretty wiped out and ended up not eating a stitch anyway. Sylvie was befriended by Ashleigh, who works at the Boca Beach Club, or I should say they were pretty enamored by each other. Perhaps it was because Ashleigh carried stickers in her pocket during breakfast, made Sylvie chocolate milk and even gave her a handmade fish gumdrop lollipop. I wish I took a picture of Sylvie holding Ashleigh's hand in the cocktail lounge Friday night. When we checked out, we made a point to tell manager how incredible she is.
I’m sure you don’t want to hear about the whole trip (Go Yankees!) so I’ll fast forward to Friday night when we returned from dinner at Morimoto to find Sylvie tucked in and sound asleep in the middle of our bed. Um, yes, we hired a babysitter. Anyway, Sylvie felt hot to us. VERY hot. We took off the blankets, got out the two thermometers that we packed and went to work. Shit. Annette had told me that because Sylvie still has her port (scheduled to be removed this Thursday!), if she runs a fever, she needs to go to a hospital, have her port accessed (translation: needles in chest) and then cultured. Annette was supposed to call me with a COG reference and in the back of my mind I thought I would call my college roommate’s dad who is the head of oncology/hematology at the U. That being said, Michael immediately called Jet Blue to see when we could get out. We texted both Dr. Rosen and also our friend Paul to ask them both what should we do. I called the Reuten Clinic and the on call doctor was not someone I know very well. We gave Sylvie Tylenol which is ‘against the rules.’ She cooled down. I thought Michael was going to have a stroke. I had to remind him that we were in BOCA RATON and not ZIHUATANEJO.
Next morning, we grabbed the 11 am flight back to LGA. My airport highlight included getting jumped in line at security by a dad with his two young sons—the boys smirking at me as they tried to sneak past me. Little did they know whom they were dealing with. I remembered them from the pool the previous day because the dad was on his cell phone and cursed in front of his kids and I felt a little bit self-righteous. So now I’m in a shit mood waiting in line and the same guy pulls a stunt like this… I squinted my eyes and said, “Sure, just go right in front of me. My kid had cancer and we’re leaving early because she’s sick and you just cut in front of me LAUGHING at me with your kids. Nice example your setting. You have no idea what it’s like having a sick child. Consider yourself lucky.” He was mortified. He just muttered, “OH.” I hope he tells his wife and friends about it. He then had to be reminded of the incident the entire flight home as they were sitting behind us.
Overall, the trip was GREAT and much needed. The family Hughes had a ball.
I plan on calling Annette tomorrow to see if they need to culture Sylvie’s port.
So Sylvie’s medical costs as billed to our insurance company well exceeds 1 million dollars as of tonight.
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