First Day of Treatment

I'm starting to wonder how many more blogs are going to start with the word First... hopefully we will fall into some type of routine soon and everything will make more sense.

This morning started with Karlee getting prepped for surgery and being taken upstairs around 11:30am.  They put in her central line with the port and gave her the first injection of chemotherapy in her spine.  She got back to the room around 1:45 or so.  She was a little uncomfortable and threw up a couple of times.  They were all fairly small ones with just a little coughing and gagging.  They quickly got the central line working and started giving her fluids through there.  They also gave her some anti-nausea drugs which seemed to get rid of all the vomiting.


Ryley was in the playroom on the unit during this time.  He had a great time playing and doing some cool crafts.  They also gave him the option to go to camp next week.  It would be a 5 day sleep away camp with cancer patients and their siblings.  We will get more information about this tomorrow and hopefully can get all the paperwork done.  Ryley is very excited about getting to do this and it will be a good break for him.  It sounds like he will get a fair bit of information during the camp as well as get to do all the regular camp stuff.


Karlee got her first dose of steroids during the afternoon.  She did great with that too.  We were concerned she wouldn't like the taste and wouldn't be willing to take them.  Nurse Mary was excellent and got her to take them with very little fuss.


Karlee also got her first dose of IV chemotherapy this evening and did excellent with that too.  She is on a few other drugs in order to help flush her kidneys of the dead cancer cells and to help control any pain.  The staff is doing an excellent job trying to stay ahead of the side effects instead of waiting for them to happen and then treating them.


So far everything is going according to the treatment plan we were provided and her side effects are all within the normal range.  On the positive side she is doing a little better with the central line port than most kids.  She has very little pain around the site and is getting used to having the port in her chest.  Right now the port has the needle attachment in it and it sticks out about an inch and a half from her chest, but when she isn't receiving treatment there will just be a little bump under the skin.  We got a training session with "Chester" the mannequin to learn exactly what they did to her and to learn about the care of the line.  Thankfully the care appears to be very, very minimal.


Tonight Karlee was going to have a midnight picnic and take her second dose of the steroids.  Tomorrow we have a few less drugs I think so it should be a pretty good day.  Ryley is heading to Drumheller with Uncle Randy, Aunt Catherine and the boys.