Start of Maintenance and a Hospital Mistake

Today was the start of maintenance and a little scary due to an error at the hospital with medication.  Everything turned out fine, but first to some happenings last week.

Karlee was finally able to go back to preschool after her 3 week quarantine due to being exposed to chicken pox.  Tuesday morning when they got back from the bus run at 9am Karlee wanted Mom to make her lunch so she could be first to school.  It was great to see her so excited about getting back to school.  She had a great day back a school!

Wednesday Mom went to the Telus World of Science with Ryley and his class.  They went to Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition and had a great time.  They were both 3rd class passengers who perished with the ship.  While they were playing on the ship Dad got to take Karlee to preschool.  We were early and Dad was a little concerned as no one else was there until exactly 12:15.  It was fun to see where Karlee gets to go to school.

Friday we all went swimming in Okotoks.  Karlee remembered her suit this week and enjoyed herself much more than sitting on the deck watching.  Both kids were disappointed when left and would gladly have stayed and swam a lot longer.

Saturday morning Mom headed to a safety class with work and Dad, Grandma and the kids were to the Loose Moose theatre to see Robin Hood with Jamie’s Preschool.  It was nice to meet some of the families of the kids that Karlee goes to school with and some of the alumni.  Mom actually managed to make it to the theatre before the play started so we all got to enjoy it together.  It was a very good play with some excellent local actors.  Both the kids love live theatre and thoroughly enjoyed Robin Hood.  After the show the actors all sat down and signed the programs for all the kids.

Immediately after the play we headed down to Lethbridge to visit Marlene and Titus and family.  It was a very long drive down this time.  We ate in the car to save time and still managed to stop 3 times for bathroom breaks and to get stuff from the trunk.  We finally got there at 2:30.  We had a good visit with everyone and the kids enjoyed playing with their cousins.  It was a late drive back with us not getting home until almost 11pm.  Ryley, of course, had to be a trooper and not fall asleep until 10:45.

Today was Karlee’s first day of maintenance.  The maintenance phase kicks off with a procedure day and two different chemo drugs.  Everything was going fine until after the procedure when they called Karlee’s nurse and said they needed a heart monitor.  Mom was a little freaked out, but had to wait for her to come out.  They mistakenly gave Karlee a double dose of ondansetron (the anti-nausea medication).  This could have put her into cardiac arrest so they hooked her up to the monitor and watched her closely for 2 hours before giving her any drugs.  After the 2 hours they pronounced her good and then gave her the chemo.  Thankfully everything turned out ok.

We also had an issue with the pharmacy today.  Karlee takes Septra 3 days every week, twice a day.  Dad called in to request a refill and everything seemed fine; about 20 minutes later they called back and said they didn’t have one of the drugs needed to make the compound prescription and had not had it for the past 2 weeks.  We called our primary nurse to see what we could do and if she could get a better update.  She let us know that they could get us tablets, but not liquid and they did not have an ETA on the drug arriving since it was a supplier issue.  We are going to use what we have and hope they have new stuff by the time we need it.  JoJo also gave us the go ahead to get Karlee’s ears pierced.  She has wanted to get them done for a while now and we figured that the end of active treatment and the start of maintenance would be a great time to do that!



Tonight was the start of Karlee taking her oral chemo each night.  She took a tablet and chewed it up and swallowed everything with absolutely no issues.  That was a huge relief for us and should make the next 2 years much easier for us.