End of the Day

Katie and I are home from Fletcher Allen. In fact, we got home soon enough to feed the horses, sit down and have dinner as a family, play some video games, and have some stories before bed. It is nice not to have to spend the entire day and most of the evening in the hospital every time we go in.

Katie had a really good day with only one little spot of sickness on the way home. She is getting much better at letting the nurses access her port. The wiggling, squirming and crying lasted less than 1 minute as the nurse cleaned the skin over the port and then accessed it. After that, Katie played happily in the comfort zone until it was time for her Lumbar Puncture. She even let one of the nurses hold her and carry her around in the comfort zone today.

When the procedure was complete, she woke up in a good mood and told me all about the hamburger that she wanted to eat as we drove over to pick up Grandma Kathy. Unfortunately, before we could get that hamburger into her, she become nauseas and wanted nothing to do with food. I gave her some Zofran to help out but it didn't work quick enough for her this time and she rode the whole way home feeling kind of queasy and not wanting to even see food. When we got home however, she was fine and she was hungry again. I cooked her up a hamburger for dinner.

Her blood cell counts should be starting to come back up now, and the next round of chemotherapy can't begin until the numbers do come back up. Everything had risen a little bit for today's test except her white blood cell counts. Her white blood cells were just over 1000 today and her ANC was a mere 70!

The doctor was just as concerned as I was about her leg today, but assured me that the sore tested negative for the drug resistant staff infection. She thinks that Katie's body is just too worn out right now to heal itself and this is another thing that may force us to wait a bit to begin the next round of chemotherapy. The doctor wants that sore to heal before she starts knocking Katie's immune system back down again. In the mean time, we are to keep a very close eye on her temperature. If it starts to rise above 100.4 she needs to go to the hospital for more antibiotics directly through an IV. She is doesn't want to let the infection in Katie's leg spread to the rest of her body and a fever would be an indication that it was doing just that.

For now, Katie is sleeping soundly in my bed, happy to be home and snuggled into her parent's bed. Josh is also asleep, and Amy and I won't be far behind.