Summer & a house move

Charlotte having fun on holiday

Well I've not written anything for a couple of months, mainly due to the school holidays. Charlotte enjoyed a lovely 5th Birthday Party in July and we had a good weeks holiday in Devon in early August. Sadly she was ill for 3 weeks of the holidays, including her first real brush with potential pneumonia, when crackling was heard & a chest x-ray was described as 'busy' on the bottom of her right lung. Thankfully despite being re-admitted a week later, the 2 week course of antibiotics she had cleared it up successfully.
So finally after staying well for a couple of weeks her count started to climb and she re-started oral chemo. She's been back on it 3 weeks now, and its quite a while since she's achieved that! She's now fighting a cold, but so far pretty successfully. She had her latest chemo via lumbar puncture at Southampton Hospital on Friday. She has been suffering with bad sickness after anaesthetic in recent months so they decided to try a different IV anti-sickness & relaxant. It was put on a drip over 30 minutes but in less than 10 Charlotte started to react badly to it and was sick, pale, sweating & a little low on oxygen levels. Thankfully by stopping the infusion straight away that settled but she was out of it for a while. Anyway they tried a different anaesthetic and she wasn't sick afterwards, so hopefully when they just do that next time we may have found a solution to make the LP days a little less unpleasant for her.
We have a testing few weeks & months ahead of us as we plan to move out of our current home in early November. The charity Leaf have been and continue to be an amazing support in our current home but I feel its important that we try to find somewhere permanent & long term for us, as we really don't know for sure what the future holds for Charlotte or if and when I could return to work. So I feel to get a secure home at least gives us a firm base for dealing with whatever else we may have to. To do that & because of the way the private rental market is, we are most likely going to have to rely on the local council to house us. This obviously doesn't give us the same choices as if renting privately but it helps manage costs and it will be more secure in the long run (as we found out when our last home was put up for sale by the landlord).