Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Cycle 3 Started

Maddy's counts were good on Monday, so we headed to the hospital on Tuesday morning to get started with the third chemo cycle of this phase of treatment.  Of course it took all day to get Maddy ready for the chemo (hydration, pH levels, etc.).  Maddy was bored so went for a walk to bug the nurses while waiting.  I told them to put her to work, so Maddy helped one of the nursing assistants fill out an environmental survey.  She had her clipboard and had to inspect the whole sixth floor of the hospital.  At one point, I went to check on her and found her behind the nurses station filling out the survey!  I'm trying to figure out if it is a good thing or a bad thing that Maddy feels right at home at the hospital...  Finally at around 8:30 PM last night, Maddy was ready to start the chemo.  Twenty-four hours of chemo and then we wait for her to recover.  We hope she can be home for the long weekend.

Exhaustion is setting in already!


Thursday, August 25, 2011

New School Year

Well, the new school year started off well.  Maddy snuck into school during the day on Monday to meet her teacher and look around the classroom.  She also had blood work done, but her counts were too low to start the next cycle of treatments.  Fortunately, this allowed her to Skype in during the first two days of school to participate in some of the "get to know you" activities with her class.  She had blood work done again today in hopes that she could start treatment, but her counts actually dropped from earlier in the week.  Now we are on hold until Monday again.  On one hand, we are glad we were able to make it through the first week of school without a hospital stay.  On the other hand, the delays just prolong this whole journey, so we tend to want to rush it along.  These are the times we have to remind ourselves to take it day by day and make the most of each of those days.  The future will be here soon enough!

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Moving Forward

Maddy was finally able to have her chemo treatment on Monday.  She also had to get her Broviac catheter repaired- one of the lumens (lines) was damaged.  Fortunately, the repair just consisted of cutting off the damaged portion of the line and gluing the new line on.  We are hoping this repair lasts as we really don't want Maddy to have to go through another surgery to have a new catheter put in.

She will hopefully finish Cycle 2 next week when she has her spinal chemo treatment.  Unfortunately, with all the delays, this puts her starting Cycle 3 with a four day hospital stay during the first week of school.  Russ and I will have to figure out what to do with this, but there is always a chance that her counts won't be high enough and we will have another delay.  This is what drives us CRAZY!

We just loaded a bunch of pictures from over the summer.  I thought I would share some of the highlights.










Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Cycle 2 Delays

It is hard to believe that August is here! July just flew by. We spent a lot of time at softball games and visiting with family and friends in between treatments. The month ended with The Cure Search Walk this past Saturday. The walk went well. We saw some friends we have made through our clinic and hospital visits. We also had some family join our team to walk. All the children were honored- those battling cancer and those who have lost the battle. The walk raised close to $30,000. Not bad for the first time walk! Thanks to everyone who donated to this great cause. While a lot of advances in the treatment of childhood cancer have been made, many more are needed!

Maddy is still trying to get through the second cycle in this first phase of treatment. Her counts were not high enough last week to have her week 2 treatment so she had bloodwork again today. Her counts are still not high enough so we will try again next Monday. Having time off this summer has been nice. While our world still revolved around Maddy's treatments, we at least didn't have as many other schedules and commitments to work around. Now that August is here, it is going to start to get hectic again! We are not looking forward to this.

Maddy is excited about school starting even though she is not going to be able to actually go to school at the start of the year. She has already gotten her school supplies and had her dad and I rearrange the office at home- she was tired of how her "classroom" was arranged and needed a change! : )