First of all Grammy DeSoto came with us to chemo in dads place. It was fun for you and its always good for me to have help. But we always miss daddy when hes not there.
Rachelle (the nurse that brings you toys) brought you a doll and a bunch of doctor stuff for you to play with. But not just toy dr. stuff...REAL doctor stuff. I had no idea you had paid so much attention to whats going on. You had everything (literally) the nurses use to clean and access a port. I was amazed as I sat there and watch you clean your dolls port site...using all the right steps. (first the alcohol prep pad, then the 3 sterile cleaning swabs, then the sterile scrubber) Then, to my amazement, they let you access your dolls "port" with an ACTUAL port needle. Once you accessed it you checked to make sure there was "blood flow" then put the window sticker over it. Then you proceeded to take your dolls blood and then transport the blood from the big tube to the little one (all of which rachelle had there for you) so you could send it off to the lab. After you were done with that you gave your doll chemo and de-accessed her. It was amazing to watch! You did little things that I have seen the nurses do, but never really noticed. For example, you pulled your gloves off by sticking your thumb underneath the glove by your wrist and turning it inside out on your hand, then used that glove to pull off the other one. Then you stuck your "blood sample" inside the glove and tried to tie a knot in it (cause thats what one of your home health nurses does to take the blood to the lab.) You were totally into it. You must've gone through three full sets of equipment before they finally made you a take-home bag of dr stuff. I was stunned to say the least. I knew you knew what was going on, but to be able to do it all step by step was amazing. You did things I'd seen done a million times,but never really noticed. I will be forever in awe of all you can take in and process.
You got chemo fairly uneventfully. Your labs came back and your ANC was low. (really long heavy sigh) We were expecting that but it still stinks. You level were only at a 700 which is considered a high risk for infection. Which basically means if you get any kind of fever 100.4 or higher you go into the hospital and will have to stay for at least a couple days. (double heavy sigh) A low ANC basically means your body has little ability to fight off infection. So, if you get a fever, we have to immediately start you on IV antibiotics and run blood cultures to find out if its a bacteria or virus. If its a bacteria they can give you a specific antibiotic to help fight the specific bacteria....if its a virus, we just have to wait it out. So, we need to hope and pray you stay healthy for the next few weeks.
The good news is you have 2 weeks "off". Next Thursday home health will come draw labs so we can check your counts (which they say will probably be pretty close to zero). Then the following Wednesday they will have home health draw labs again so we can see if your counts have recovered enough to give more chemo the next day. If they are good enough, we go in for a Back Poke, and a bunch of new chemos that I dont want to think about right now. Its too much to worry about all at once.
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| A series of photos of you giving me attitude...and everything in between! |
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