Calming Down

Well, things have seemed to calmed down a little, and we hope it stays this way.

A little back story….

When we went in to the hospital for a scheduled chemo appointment this past Monday, she was not really eating or drinking and had been barfing for about a week. There was nothing to indicate that anything was really “wrong” and so we went home.

Angelica’s temperatures had been up and down over the past week and she’d been feeling quite off; but they never quite made it up to 38F and never up to the 38.5F instant trip to the hospital….and they would typically climb down over night and we’d carry on the next day.

It’s been horrible to try to force her to drink and eat and we’ve not managed to keep enough drink in her to properly hydrate her and definitely not enough food in her either.

We called into the oncology clinic a few times and finally, on Thursday morning, made an appointment to come in on Friday morning to get hydrated, to check her blood levels and get topped up, if necessary, for the weekend.

She actually had a pretty good day on Thursday…she didn’t barf at all and managed to drink almost all of the required 2 liters of fluid. Then, just before bed, we took her temperature and it was at 38.1F so we waited half an hour and took it again….38F on the dot….so we called in to let them know and as per protocol…..Jon had to take her in.

It took a few minutes to get their bags together and just for fun…we took her temp one last time…it was down to 37.9F. That was a little frustrating because it’s possible that if we’d waited a few more minutes, we wouldn’t have had to drive in, but we had already called and they were expecting us.

Jon took her in and to make a long story short…she was fine – you know, beside the barfing and not drinking.

They sent her home and said that she could keep her 10am appointment on Friday morning.

By the time they got home, it was almost 2am and she’d not had enough food in her tummy and she started barfing…and barfing and barfing….but of course with an empty stomach…well, it was not pretty.

She finally got to sleep but woke up at 7am and it started all over again.

When they got into the clinic on Friday morning, she was still barfing and they finally came up with a cocktail of enough drugs to calm her system down. They pumped a ton of fluid into her, but surprisingly, we’d been able to hydrate her enough that she was not severely dehydrated, as I’d wondered about.

There has been some talk of tube feeding her, but at this point, they are even concerned about that because if she’s vomiting…then she would most likely just vomit that up as well……

Her levels were all good and in the end, they believe that the vomiting is one of two things….either it’s a reaction to one of the chemo drugs or it’s as a result of being on an oral antibiotic for almost a month.

We are hoping that her stomach has just revolted to being on a month of oral antibiotics and that now that they’ve been discontinued, that her stomach will settle down and stop producing massive amounts of acid and that she’ll be able to start eating and drinking without pain or problem….

If it is a reaction to the one chemo drug, that would suck terribly as she is supposed to start that particular drug again on Tuesday.

So, we are seriously praying that it’s the antibiotics and not the chemo drug….

She is starting to eat some and drink some, but we need her to be able to eat and drink normally so that she can be healthy and strong enough to endure this journey.

We have a blood test on Monday to see how she’s doing and depending on the results of that, she is scheduled to start the second half of this stage on Tuesday.

We are believing for a good weekend and some quieter, calmer, healthier moments.