Sorry that I didn't update yesterday. I could tell by the text messages and phone calls that some were looking for news.
It was a LONG day. Alex had her lumbar puncture scheduled for 11:00am. They were actually quite good at getting her in there on time. The procedure went quite fast. While she was in recovery the anesthesiologist stopped on by to talk to me... which was weird because they never do that. Apparently Alex's blood pressure went VERY low during the procedure and the Dr. said it "surprised" him. Her systolic actually dropped to 50 (this is usually the big number). The anesthesiologist had to give her some medication during all this to get that back on line. Alex's baseline blood pressure is pretty low anyway but this went well beyond that. In the recovery room her blood pressure was normal as usual and nothing more became of that. I am sure they'll watch for that in the future. It appears that more lumbar punctures are in her future. They already had Alex's cell results by late afternoon yesterday. The blasts in the spinal fluid (cancer cells) had gone down to 17%. This is better than last week but the blasts inside the spinal fluid are still persistent. They infused some longer acting, thicker ARC chemo. This will hopefully do some long term house-cleaning with those bad cells. I guess we'll find out in a few weeks how successful it was. I REALLY hope it does the trick. It's really frustrating to think back to those high-dose treatments that were supposed to take care of all this and didn't. I hope Alex doesn't suffer through weeks and weeks of this chemical lifestyle and have it not be effective. Ya know?
Alex is feeling a LOT better this morning. As good as it gets considering she's had 3 full days of chemo and being put under anesthesia and getting a big metal needle shoved up her spine with more chemo... She is just amazing. She felt well enough to walk across the 4th floor all the way over to the University Hospital (connected by a walkway here in Primary...it's awesome) where there is a Starbucks. She had to wear her mask, but it was nice to get her out of the room and it's so good for her to walk a little also.
SO... on rounds today the doctor stopped in and said they are going to bump up her chemotherapy by 4 hours for the next two days. They have been doing it each day at 5:30pm. Today it's starting at 1:30pm and then tomorrow at 9:30am. They are hoping that they can get us out of here tomorrow night. This will very much depend on how Alex is feeling by late tomorrow afternoon. If they still want her on I.V. fluids, I think we'll opt to stay another day rather than deal with them at home. It's very difficult to get an evening discharge and then go through waiting for home healthcare all night. And having to deal with dragging a pole around for just a night. Not worth it. So... we may still stay until Saturday anyway. We'll see.
I read a sad news story yesterday about the little girl who starred in Broadway's The Lion King died a few days ago from complications from a cord blood transplant that she received after battling leukemia. I read that over 80% of African-American's are unable to find a good bone marrow match. That news is SOOOO incredibly sad! I guess Alicia Keys and a few others were campaigning to find this little girl a match... and to increase bone marrow awareness. I urge everyone to be part of the bone marrow registry.
I hope everyone has a great day today. I will update tomorrow with news of when we get to go home. So far all of Alex's blood counts are good, so?
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