Our kid was mostly in isolation during induction and had severe hunger pangs from the steroids; she experienced a wide range of emotions from fear, anxiety, and anger to crying hysterically.

Our kid was hospitalized for this entire phase of 30 days due to neutropenia. She shut down socially — did not want visitors at the hospital; didn’t even want to step out of her room to walk in the hospital. The medicines (dexamethasone or decadron) made her angry and irritable. She didn’t even want her dad, grandma or grandpa around.

Another hallmark of this phase was the severe hunger pangs. She literally stuffed herself like a pig — she would eat an entire adult serving of spaghetti and within half hour, feel hungry and demand more food. Surely enough, this would be followed by severe tummy ache, for after all, how much could a tiny stomach handle. The worst example of this was when she ate four corn on the cobs in a couple of hours!

The hunger pangs were coupled with intense food cravings. She would wake up in the middle of the night dreaming about donuts, or pizza, samosa, pani puri, idli… Our #1 task was to fulfill that desire in the morning. 🙂 While we were initially nervous about the crazy eating, and sudden gain in weight (she put on 10-15 pounds in a month!), this was good in hindsight since she almost stopped eating during the next phase of consolidation.

The induction phase was also marked by sleeplessness — she couldn’t sleep for more than 2 hours at a stretch, and had difficulty falling asleep again.

Our kid found her own ways to overcome the pain, boredom and isolation at the hospital — she spent hours playing Osmo tangram, numbers, words and coding games. She also got hooked to ABCmouse.com. Then of course, there was YouTube, and Netflix. She watched various movies and TV shows about princesses, fairies, ponies, and dinosaurs. The running theme was “be brave and kind”. We watched almost any movie or show that had a brave and kind character, happy ending, and gave hope that all would be well… 

Her addiction to the iPad was so strong that we called this the iPad or iMad phase 🙂