Good times for #TeamOscar but still waiting to hear what's next!

On Thursday and Friday last week, Oscar had the stem cell harvest procedure repeated to ensure he has enough to transplant back to him once he needs them.  This will take place after high dose chemo, and is an alternative to a bone marrow transplant, in that his own healthy marrow cells were harvested and will be frozen and given back to him.  This needs to happen as the high dose chemo will be so toxic his bone marrow will be completely destroyed...

Poor little man was in an awful lot of pain with the tube in his groin this time, it's not often he shows that he is in pain but it was bad, he didn't really sleep and couldn't be moved for the 36 hours it was in.  However the harvest was a huge success - the doctors were hoping for a total of 3 million (cells?), but Oscar managed to yield just over 4 million!  Thanks again to everyone who made this a huge success, but especially Oscar, what a little star!

He also got to see The Big Machine once again, and managed to put right the fact that it had no eyes!  Thanks to Valerie for providing the googly eyes, and everyone agreed that it did look much better now.  Well done Oscar, that was a great idea!  It's so funny the way he processes these thoughts, he considers The Big Machine to be a living thing, he was so concerned it had no eyes, and was worried about where it would sleep, suggested it wanted rice crispies after his harvest was finished, and was also worried that it would get cold and wet going outside onto the lorry again.  I love his imagination!

We decided to treat Oscar (and Izzie and ourselves!) to a night away after this tough procedure was over.  Oscar loves staying in hotels and living it up!  We spent St Patrick's Day in The Merchant Hotel (thanks to Stephen's friends at QUB, what a lovely leaving present!).  We watched everyone pass by from 4 floors up, treated ourselves to tea and cakes in our room, the kids had a fun time in the roll top bath, and to top it all off I had a very special Mother's Day breakfast the following morning!

What a perfect way to spend our last weekend together (for a while) as a 4, we are waiting on the phonecall to tell us whether high dose chemo is next (which is up to 6 weeks isolation in hospital for Oscar, without seeing Izzie or any other family members apart from me and Stephen), or MIBG therapy, which would have to take place in London.  The rollercoaster ride continues...!