Two Trips to Primary Children's

A lot has happened in the last two days.

Monday (August 9)
1. I took our Little Air Bear to Primary Children's to do a follow up CT Scan of her lungs. We only had her sedated with one sedation drug (Versed) which just sort of relaxed her, but she was still able to move and talk. Last time we also used Ketamine which puts her just about all the way asleep for only 5 minutes. She gets sedated so much.

2. Her ANC came up to 1400! That was a surprise. We sat in the Hemotology/Oncology Clinic for over an hour to get the results and I was thankful that Erin was still loopy from the sedation otherwise she wouldn't have been so happy waiting there.

3. Dr. Katoua (an Oncologist) told us that the nodules on her lungs were pretty much gone. We are able to stop giving her the Meropenem (IV Antibiotic). YES! We just never get a full night's sleep when we have to give it to her at 10pm and then 6am, since the drugs run for 30 minutes and we have to turn the pump off at 10:30pm and 6:30am.

Tuesday (August 10)
1. John took Erin to Primary Children's today for her Bone Marrow Biopsy and her Spinal Tap. Her ANC is down to 900. It is normal for it to fluctuate up and down.

2. Erin is scheduled to start Chemotherapy Round #3 on Thursday. It is an Intensification Round. It will be a challenging round for her and we are not looking forward to it, nonetheless, we will charge through it.

3. We learned that Round #3 of Chemotherapy is 5 days long. They will only give her two chemotherapy drugs, VP-16 and ARA-C. This time though, she will be given TEN TIMES more the usual amount of ARA-C (something like instead of 100 ml, she'll get 1,000 ml). It will be intense and she will be really sick from it. It will kill off her bone marrow and her counts will all hover around zero for quite some time. We pray so much that she won't get a fungal or bacterial infection while she is doing this round. It is important that she stay as healthy as possible.