Monday morning we were back at the hospital for about 11:15am. Ryley stayed with Grandma in case it was a longer trip to get the port working. Once we got to the hospital we were again given the same room as Saturday and Sunday. The nurse came in and drew out the TPA and it was immediately followed by a nice flow of beautiful red blood. We all gave a quick cheer and Karlee remarked, "You just needed to use an empty one." She was referring to the nurses always using a syringe with some saline in it and then trying to pull back some blood. It is somewhere between cute and a little scary when a 3 year old starts to tell the nurses how it should work.
We quickly got out of there before they decided to do something else to keep us there. It was the quickest visit yet - we were under 30 minutes from walking in to walking out. We headed down to Swiss Chalet to join Grandma and Ryley for lunch.
The afternoon was wonderful watching the best team in the CFL destroy the team from just up the highway.
Tuesday was Karlee's final day of the induction phase. Mom took Karlee up to the hospital as Dad had to work and get Ryley to school. The drive to the hospital was a zoo today; it took over an hour to do the 40 minute drive. Hopefully this isn't an indication of what will be coming now that school is back in and everyone is back at work.
Karlee was a very patient little girl while waiting for her time in the procedure room. The entire clinic was very busy today and the chemotherapy was late arriving for everyone who needed it today. Karlee was the first of the procedure patients, but she didn't start until about 12:30. The nurses aren't happy when procedures start this late in the day. They have a bunch of steroid driven kids who are on a steroid appetite and aren't allowed to eat and are on a steroid driven hormone swing. Many of the kids get very angry due to the mood swings and the delays. Karlee was a perfect little angel waiting for her time to come up.
She had a bone marrow aspirate, a lumbar puncture and a chemotherapy injection in the spine today. She came out of surgery with no issues and promptly woke up and asked for a rice krispy square. They didn't give her morphine during the procedure and she woke up right away this time. It might be the morphine that is not allowing her to wake up quickly after surgery.
She was starving, but in a good mood when she woke up. They were home just after 3 today and Karlee was in a fair bit of pain. She had some codeine and had some Tylenol later that evening. It is really nice when you have a couple of drugs that you can team up to help with the pain. Sharon from church provided a great meal tonight. Ryley even enjoyed the chicken and rice.
Karlee is now on a drug and treatment holiday. She gets this week off without any chemotherapy or steroids; all she has to take is the antibiotic septra for 3 days. We should get some of the results Thursday or Friday of the bone marrow aspirate. They are now looking to see if she has fallen to less than 0.1% of her marrow cells being affected by the leukemia. So far she has 2 of the 3 factors in her favour to push her to the low risk of the standard risk. Hopefully we can get all 3 together and then she will end up with a slightly less aggressive treatment protocol for the next 5 months.
No comments:
Post a Comment