Day -38 (days to transplant)
Everything has been going pretty well this week. Alex has still been having quite a bit of pain in her lower back. I am not really sure what to attribute this to?
The home healthcare nurse has been coming every Monday and Thursday for blood draws. Alex has also been on daily neupogen shots to stimulate blood cell growth. This is how quickly the blood counts will drop from chemotherapy... On Monday of last week Alex's ANC was 4500. This is a pretty normal ANC. We wondered why she had to be getting neupogen shots with an ANC this high. The oncologist assured me that her counts had not dropped from her previous 5 day stay in the hospital. Ok... I guess he knows what he's talking about. Well, the blood counts on Thursday put her ANC at ZERO! With neupogen shots. Unreal that blood counts can drop so low in 3 days. This certainly put a damper on all her weekend plans. Her dad flew in Friday for another long weekend visit. They ended up being house bound but they did have a great visit. She just loves spending time with him. It's a killer when he has to fly back home. Alex made it through the weekend with no fevers and no problems. Yay! Today we had the nurse back out for blood draws and it appears her ANC is back up to 2300! Wooohooo! That means we are right in line for the next course to begin on Friday. Well, we think. Her platelets today were 81,000. They have to be 75,000 to begin. SO... we are there as of today, but... if they go down at all?? I'm not sure. If everything lines up this is how it will go: Thursday starts the 24 hour of urine collection. This sounds like a lot of fun. Alex will not be able to leave the house because we need to collect every bit of urine from 9:00am Thursday morning until we leave for the hospital on Friday morning. We get to keep this by the toilet on ice... nifty huh? Then on Friday she will be admitted into the hospital again. She will get another lumbar puncture with methotrexate chemotherapy. It will be good to see if all the blasts are gone in her spinal fluid still. I am not sure what will happen if there are still some there. I try not to think about that. After the spinal, she will be back in her room and they will prep her for the 24 hour continuous I.V. Methotrexate. This will be an extremely high dose that she has not had before. I hope that she tolerates it well.
That is about it for this week. Nothing too exciting which is good. We have more than enough excitement to look forward to.
I will update more from the inside on Friday. Please keep up the positive ju-ju! We really need and appreciate it!
As a side note... we are trying to arrange a blood drive in Alex's honor. I would like to try to arrange this before the transplant date. I hope to have more information on this soon. I hope everyone that is able can come and donate. The blood banks are low on blood and platelets. I know we have used more than our share. I hope we can give some back. I will update with information soon.
I've had the lumbar punctures and high dose methotrexate. I remember it made me tired and the nurses kept encouraging me to drink lots of fluids to flush it from my system. You can do this.
ReplyDeleteAlex looks so good! Tell her hello for me :) I think about you guys daily!!! Let me know when you do the blood drive because I would love to advertise for it and get as many people come out as I can! Love you Steph!!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments! And Ann, thank you so much for answering all my questions that I emailed to you. It's such a great thing to have some information from someone that has been through all this.
ReplyDeleteAnd Jess, thanks so much! I will definitely get you the information as soon as I get it. I love and miss you! And Kinsey is SOOOO adorable! Seriously one of the cutest babies that I have seen!