Chemo and Christmas Activities

Karlee’s new dose of chemo is already starting to have some side effects.  They increased her dose because her counts have been higher than they like to see over the last 3 months.  This means the chemo isn’t beating her down (and killing cells) as hard as it should be.  Chemo doesn’t just target the bad cells, but it kills all the cells which is supposed to ensure the cancer doesn’t come back.  She has a rash on her feet that she has had for a while, but it has gotten worse and now it is very itchy.  There have been a couple of nights where she has not been able to get to sleep because her feet have been bothering her.  She is also more run down and tired than she has been.  We keep expecting her to spike a fever due to the way she is acting, but her temperature keeps coming back normal.  This week is a double whammy because in addition to the new chemo dose she is on steroids so she is eating like a horse.

Over Christmas we managed to do a number of fun things with the kids.  For Christmas Grandma got us passes to the new Telus Science Centre so we headed there between Christmas and New Year’s.  They have a nice new building and the exhibits aren’t falling apart anymore.  The kids enjoyed the kid’s gallery and liked playing with all the hands on exhibits.  Ryley’s favourite part was taking pictures of objects and turning them into a video and then adding sound to his movie.  He was supposed to be able to see it at home, but they are still working on that part of their website.  We went to one of their shows and everyone was excited about the liquid nitrogen and the isopropyl alcohol rocket.  I’m sure we will get good use out of the passes this year.

On January 3rd we went rollerskating with the Scouts.  This is the second year we have done this activity and everyone enjoys it.  Karlee did a great job skating this year without any help.  Last year she was too sick to go to the rollerskating event so this was only her second time trying it.  She loved getting out there and going for it.  Ryley had a great time too as he always does.  It is nice to see that Lloyds hasn’t changed in 30 years.

This last weekend was a lot of hockey.  We started out with a practice in High River on Friday night.  Jennifer and Karlee went swimming down there while we were on the ice.  Ryley was goalie and worked up a good sweat.  Saturday we had a league game at 9am and then we headed to Strathmore for a tournament game at noon.  Sunday we had another pair of games in Strathmore.  We were definitely in the wrong division for this tournament as we lost all 3 games and 2 of them were ugly.  This was a Tier 5 tournament that is supposed to be division 7/8 and we are division 6.  We have another tournament coming up that is Tier 4… we need to get out of that one or it will be a massacre.  Sunday afternoon we joined Chris, Tanya and McKenzie at the Trico Centre for an afternoon of swimming.  Monday morning the kids were back at school.  Both of them were excited to go back and we are all looking forward to getting back to a routine.

One of the other Mom’s in the clinic the day that Karlee coded wrote a blog entry about it.  It is interesting to get another point of view on what happened and how it affects everyone.  You can find her blog here: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/TySparks/journal.  I can not link to the exact entry, but it was published on Friday January 6th.

Christmas, Clinic Day and New Years

Christmas Eve was a nice family day that we enjoyed together.  We started the day off with a trip to the zoo.  We have done this a couple of times as we find it is nice and quiet and the animals seems to be more active.  The animals this year weren’t overly busy, but the zoo was nice and quiet.  After the zoo we went to Church with Grandma.  Her Church always does the story of Christmas and invites the kids to dress up and help in the telling of the story.  Ryley was a Shepherd again and this year Karlee was a donkey.  Cousin Everett joined Ryley as a Shepherd and cousin Oliver was a sheep.  It was a very nice service and the kids had a great time.  We went back to Grandma’s for some Chinese food and then headed home to get ready for the big day.  Christmas Eve the kids both get to open one present and it is always pyjamas and a book.  They enjoy the tradition and then they get ready for bed and we read Twas The Night Before Christmas as a family.

For once the kids were not up at the crack of dawn bugging us, but they both managed to sleep in until 7am.  We opened our stockings first and then headed downstairs to see what was under the tree.  The kids were again spoiled.  Karlee got a big Disney Cinderella, Barbie’s, doll clothes, doll furniture, movies and I am sure there was more.  Ryley got lots of lego, an iPod touch, a winter sleeping bad, movies and more.  Jennifer and myself were well looked after too.  After we opened everything at home Jennifer made a few phone calls to Nova Scotia and then we were off to Grandma’s.

We beat Randy and Catherine by about 5 minutes getting to Grandma’s.  The kids once again devoured the presents and were done opening everything in about 15 minutes.  They were spoiled again.  We then had breakfast and the kids started playing with all their new toys.  We spent the majority of the day at Grandma’s only coming home for a couple of hours in the afternoon for a rest.  Supper was excellent as always.  Once we finished eating we went home and the kids fell asleep exhausted.

Boxing day we decided to get up early and go down to Canadian Blood Services and donate blood.  We had called on Christmas Day to get an appointment as we realized it had been a while since we donated.  We try to donate regularly, but it isn’t always as easy as we would like.  Knowing all the kids at the ACH that need blood motivates us to donate more than we did before.  We stopped at London Drugs on the way home to do a little Boxing Day shopping.  Jennifer’s camera had pretty much given up on us over the last few weeks so we were looking to replace it.  We got a great deal on a camera and a set of headphones for Ryley and didn’t have to deal with any crowds so we were happy.   On the 27th we went to Jennifer’s Aunt Dorothy’s for supper.  Donny, Danny and Eva were there an we had a great visit and a good meal with them.
 
Thursday the 29th was Karlee’s make-up procedure day after the delay last week and then all the issues.  Procedure days are always long days, but it was a different feeling for both Jennifer and myself after the issues last time.  The visit with the doctor yielded no new information about what might have caused the code blue last time.  Everything went normally and Karlee went in for her procedure around noon.  Jennifer found this time was just as bad as the first surgery that Karlee had.  Waiting for them to bring her back seemed to take forever.  When she got back everything was fine, but they had to give her extra sedative to keep her from moving.  We think the doctors wanted to limit the amount of sedative so they tried it with a lower level.  She ended up getting 6 pokes in the back (instead of the normal one) and was very sore.  Everything else about procedure day seemed very normal except her chemo levels were increased.

New Year’s Eve we headed to Bergen around noon.  We were going out there to get together with Frances, Roland, Barry, Cyndie and Sean.  We had a potluck supper and then sat around the fire bringing in the New Year.  It was great to see Sean fly in to visit and it was nice to see Barry and Cyndie again.  We don’t see them very often even though they only live 45 minutes away.  The kids enjoyed trying to stay up.  Karlee made it until about 11 and Ryley was awake to bring in the New Year.  The next morning we had  breakfast and then went skating on the pond.  The kids loved skating outdoors again (first time this year)!

We hope everyone had a safe and Happy New Year!