Monday Night Update

Katie had a low key day today, taking naps and just hanging out around the room with only a couple of 5 minute excursions down the hall to the ride-on toys. Her cough is better, although I am still not happy with it. She can at least sleep without coughing now and that is a tremendous help.

She still has her appetite and is eating a lot. She still favors pasta and Popsicles at this point.

She received another new chemotherapy drug today and doctors watched her closely for adverse reactions. She had none. This drug was not fun to take. She had to get it by needle and that is never fun. However, she clung to her mother and took it like a trooper.

Her battle with constipation is finally over. I guess all of that pasta, combined with regular doses of laxative worked. The laxative will be carefully administered for the next month or so while she is taking the chemotherapy drugs that cause the constipation. The goal is to get her back to a once-a-day girl and keep her that way by varying the amount of laxative that she gets each day.

Josh and I are finally home. We arrived this evening around 6pm and he is now sleeping soundly. We each go to school tomorrow and try to get back to something resembling our previously normal routine.

The doctors are trying to prepare us for taking Katie home. The lesson for the day was hand washing, hand washing, hand washing. Did I stress it enough? Despite the fact that outside germs pose a significant risk to her health, one of Katie's biggest risk factors is the fact that she is two and puts things in her mouth or touches everything and then puts her hands in her mouth. We are going to have to make sure that she washes her hands often and that we wash our hands just as often to keep the spread of germs to a minimum. The doctors also warned us to look out for some much more serious side-effects once we get home including unstoppable bleeding, blood clots, extreme lethargy,and necrosis of tissue exposed to some of the more potent chemotherapy drugs. It's all enough to make me want to keep living at the hospital with her where she can be monitored by professionals 24-7.