Well we were admitted from Tuesday til Friday and were sent home knowing that homecare would be in to see Aly once a day. She had a small IV pump hooked up to her port and it administered antibiotics to her every 6 hours. The Tuesday following our discharge, we returned to the clinic to pick up where we were supposed to be last week - bloodwork, LP and admission for an overnight treatment. The need to stay over night is mainly just to ensure that Aly gets adequate fluids as the chemo she received has a tendency to be hard on the bladder. Well her counts were good, so the LP happened and we made our way up to her room once it was ready. I normally don't mind being in the hospital, but the room we were put in, just happened to be the room where it all began. Rm 1034 ( I will never forget that) was the room we spent our first few nights in when she was first diagnosed and I just couldn't get comfortable in there - - luckily it was only for one day. After being discharged from that admission we still visited the cancer clinic daily for her chemo treatment of cybaratine. Aly had no issues going to clinic during that week, mainly because we kept her gripper in, so there was no need for the nurses to access her so she was happy there were no needles, but that all changed on Friday when they had to take her gripper out - - she had a COMPLETE meltdown! I knew we had to return on Tuesday and I was already worried about how she was going to react. Well that was today - and she was not happy. When Aly woke up this morning she was fine ... she even reminded me that we had to put on her patch ( to numb the area for the needle). But, for some reason she got really quiet when we got into Granny's car, and she didn't say a word the whole trip down in the car. She was very cuddly and whiney once we arrived at the clinic and I don't think she left my arms once. Even when the doctor examined her, she had her arms wrapped right around my neck. Her counts were good today and she received her 2ml of chemo run over 15 minutes then we were off. We decided to keep her gripper in so she didn't have to get poked every day this week and hopefully that will help with her anxiety.
There is no way to describe the rest of the day, except just saying that it sucks. When we arrived home, Aly was hungry and asked for some of Papa's cereal ( Shreddies) so she ate about half a bowl and had juice. About 5 minutes after eating that she started to throw up, and throw up and throw up. She gets so scared when she gets sick - it must be that feeling when its just about to happen. I think I changed her 3 times and myself twice. As soon as she was sick, I felt bad but I had to leave her alone and run and put the dogs outside. Considering she just received chemo, although a small dose, her fluids are still considered toxic so I wanted to make sure the dogs were kept away from it. I then had to grab the proper gloves and paper towel so I could clean it all up after consoling her. Nothing is worse than a child wanting the comfort of her mom, and here I am holding her with these blue gloves and trying to keep the puke and other fluids away from my skin - how loving. Once I got it all cleaned up I tried to get her to have a nap in her room, or mine, but she just wanted to be out in the living room on the couch. So I put down a blanket and she soon feel asleep. She has now been napping for about 2 hours and has only woken once to be sick.
Now throwing up is apparently a normal side effect of receiving chemo, some of the kids at clinic throw up all the time, but this is somewhat new for Aly. Her chemo treatment was only 2mL so I can't imagine that is what made her sick, but I also hope she didn't pick up a bug somewhere.
So now the dogs are asleep and so is Aly - - perhaps the smartest thing I can do right now is also take a nap. It could be a long night.
