Round #1 Last day of Chemo for Acute Myeloid Leukemia

This morning at 10:00 am Erin had her last dose of chemotherapy for this first of the five rounds to kill her Acute Myeloid Leukemia M7. Her ANC (fighter white blood cells) are at zero and will stay at zero for a few weeks. In approximately 3 weeks when her ANC comes up we'll get to bring her home. We are not sure how long we'll get to bring her home. We've heard we can have her home for about 3-15 days before she'll go back to Primary Children's for her second round of chemotherapy.

Grandpa Swenson has been staying with Erin since Saturday and they are having a great time together. He has been able to get her to eat all sorts of food like cheerios and ice cream. Tomorrow Grandma Swenson will spend 2 days with Erin. She is getting special treatment from her extended family.

We have enjoyed being in our home, but we have greatly missed being with Erin. As we were driving back to Logan Cecily asked us when we were going to see Erin again. She begand to cry and said that she missed Erin. Today Caleb told me that he wanted to go back to the hospital. It's sad that the hospital is where our family is all together, but we'll do what we need to to have our Erin back with us.

Erin is back on the Benadryl (to prevent an allergic reaction) and Vancomycin (antibiotic) for an infection in her bone marrow site. The doctors have been watching her site where they took the bone marrow out and it has gotten smaller, but it is still raised, hard, and red. With her white blood cells down her body doesn't show signs of infection like you or I would have. Her body doesn't produce puss or swelling and often all her medications will mask a fever. The doctors are concerned that she could have a staff infection at her site. Her blood pressure has been high since starting chemotherapy so the oncologist also started her on a medication to lower her blood pressure.

Tags: "Childhood Acute Myeloid Leukemia" "AML" "Leukemia" "M7" "Acute Megakaryocytic Leukemia"