Category: Health

And Just Like That

Jon and Geli went into the hospital yesterday and I honestly believed that it would be a super quick in and out.

By super quick, I mean approximately 1 hour……that’s about how long it takes to have her blood drawn and then to get the results back. The 1 dose of IV Chemo takes about 10-15 mins and can be given while they are waiting on the results.

We had wondered about her needing a red blood transfusion because she was quite pale and very tired.

I wasn’t expecting that all her counts would be quite as low as they are. Her counts had seemed to be heading up but right now they are looooooooow. Which means no more school this week! Seriously, what’s up with that?

And so she scored herself 2 bags of red blood cells and a bag of platelets…….and the quick 1 hour appointment turned into and ALL DAY AFFAIR.

Judah says, “Hello!”

Judah says hello

crappy photo quality from my Blackberry

My mom had come over just after they left and took Siah with her over to visit my sister. So, I had the day with just Judah and myself. I wish I weren’t quite so exhausted. I was left feeling like I HAD to clean while I had the opportunity and no one else was there and also like I just wanted to sit on the couch and do nothing…..the end result was that I did neither very well and ended up feeling guilty about it all. How’s that for wrecking your day…..

I coulda……

I could have done this or that or the other thing, and all I accomplished was eating junk food(this belongs in a whole ‘nuther post itself about emotional eating), 3 loads of laundry, disinfecting the floors, a blog post and dinner for the family.

So we will be fed and clothed an hopefully free(er) from germs, but not much more than that. I’m thankful that I managed to sanitize the bathrooms early this morning.

Depending on how her counts rise, starting the next stage may be stalled a week. We are hoping that her counts rebound this week and that things move forward as planned BUT….we just have to see how it goes and carry on from there.

First Day of High School

First Day of Grade 8Angelica went to her first day of High School yesterday.

I have NEVER been as worried or nervous or consumed in regards to first days with ANY of my kids, as I was yesterday.

It was brutal.

We weren’t sure just how Geli would be feeling and how much of the day she’d be able to do. She had a vocal class first, then English 8, followed by a double block of Science 8 taught in French and then her actual French Language class.

We decided to start with the double block of Science. That gave her a start time of 10:40am. So her day looked like this, she had the first half of Science, lunch break, second half of Science and her French class.

She did really well. Met up with some of her friends and class mates from Alex Hope and all in all she had a really great day. She was even up for a little grocery shopping with me after school. We needed to pick up some lunch snack food. The activity of the day did take it’s toll, and she was in bed and sleeping by 8pm.

We are still working out the process of having her “in” school on the days that she can be and also having her be apart of the Homebound Education Program. Apparently it’s not typical in this school district to do both schooling and homebound….they like you to choose one or the other. We want her in both so that she gets the help and support while she cannot be at school, but also want her to be able to go to school “normally” when she can.

Geli and Jon went into BC Children’s today for the last dose of IV Chemo for this second stage. Depending on certain counts, she may or may not score a transfusion today as well. Well just have to wait and see.

If all goes as planned, she should be able to attend the rest of this week at school.

It is taking a great amount of effort to send her off to school knowing that there are sick kids, and germs and that we are not in control of her situation and choices….this is where faith and trust are so important. This is the first time that we or (my mom) have not been with her since we found out in June……..and,this is just another leg of this journey that we are walking…….we will get through it. One step at a time.

Beauty

2 Stitches

As if we didn’t have enough drama in our lives right now, Siah decided to shake things up a little last night.

Jon, Jeremy and Siah were down in the basement playing a video game. Siah was sitting on the arm rest of our futon and he unbalanced himself and fell forward hitting his head on the corner of a wooden toy box.

Breakfast

Breakfast

Mom, the girls, Judah and I were up in the kitchen and heard the thunk. It was that loud. Then we heard Jon yell and then we heard Siah crying and it was “one of those cries.”

I raced downstairs and met Jon at the bottom of the stairs. He handed Siah off to me and there was blood everywhere. I could see that his head was split open in between his eyes. We came up stairs and got a rag to try to stop the blood. It was apparent that he’s need stitches.

First Bite

First Bite

We hoped that we could make it to the local clinic that did Jeremy’s stitches as we’ve talked with them about our challenges of dealing with germs and sickness due to Angelica’s suppressed immune system, BUT….it was 7:30pm and they were closed at 8pm and they were already over booked for the day and were not even answering their phone.

And so Jon headed to the ER.

The plan was for Jon to wear a mask into the ER and explain the situation and see how they could work with us to get Siah the care that he needed while attempting to keep us as germ free as possible.

The staff at Langley Hospital were amazing.

Deliciousness

Geli’s Delicious Cinnamon Buns

They didn’t have any open rooms at the time, but they planned to get a room emptied and clean out and to bring Jon and Siah in and straight back to the closed room as soon as possible. They gave Jon a small mask for Siah to wear in and out and in the waiting time, they stayed in the van to minimize the possibility of picking anything up from other ill people.

They waited in the van and the triage nurse came out to the van to assess Siah and yup….he needed stitches.

It took a few hours, and in the mean time, Siah fell asleep.

See Food

See Food

When the room was finally ready, Jon carried the sleeping Siah in. He said that they got quite a few looks, as he’d been in and out with his mask on and now they were carrying a limp child in with a mask on….can you imagine that others in the waiting room must have been wondering what was wrong with this child that they had to wear masks????

Jon tried to wake Siah up to explain what was about to happen, but he had tired himself out so badly with his initial screaming when it happened that he was NOT waking up. He was in that drowsy state where you’re not really awake but not really asleep. They finally wrapped him like a burrito to keep him from being able to move his arms and the Dr checked to see that Jon was okay with what was going to happen and once he was sure that Jon wasn’t going to flip out….they started.

They had already put on a fast acting numbing cream and they started injecting the freezing and that’s when Siah woke up for real. So in his mind, probably, he went to sleep and was woken up to some dude poking his head with a needle. AWESOME! Jon said he screamed until he wasn’t breathing. Brutal! The Doctor only put in two stitches because he figured that was about all that Siah could handle and even though he was being quick, it was still pretty traumatic.

He told Jon that the cut was extremely straight and that it should heal amazingly because it was such a precise cut.

2 Stitches

2 Stitches

They masked up again and came home. Siah settled down pretty quickly once Jon was able to hold him and was almost asleep by the time they reached the van.

They got home before 11pm….not bad considering the waits in ER’s now a days.

He went to bed right away and slept through until 6am when he crawled into bed with us.

This morning he seems to be doing okay and so we are just gonna take it easy today. Geli’s doing pretty good this morning too. We were attempting to adjust her meds schedule around so that we were not having to wake up at 3am to give her a dose, but that meant that she might be a little barfy this morning. She did feel a bit off and dry heaved for about 45 minutes off and on until the meds finally kicked in. Her and Siah are back downstairs in the basement this morning. She is teaching Josiah how to play the original NES Nintendo Super Mario Brother’s game. He’s thrilled and she’s distracted and it’s good.

This is now the 4th of our 5 kids that have gotten stitches in their head…..when she was about 8 years old, Geli wacked her head open on a floor heater and needed 3 stitches. When Xani was about 10, her cousin went all vmapire on her and tried to take a bite out her head while they were jumping on a trampoline and she needed 3 stitches. A few weeks ago, Jeremy got 3 stitches in his chin and now Josiah has had 2 stitches in between his eyes…..GAH!

I’m really hoping and praying that Judah stays safe and protected.

Do you have any cool stories about “that time you got stitches” or your kids……Please share!

Barfing Sucks

Geli had her appointment on Tuesday for this week’s dose of chemotherapy.

Not surprising her counts were low enough to score her a free bag of platelets. In fact, she was actually too low to receive the intra-muscular injections BUT………there seems to be WAY TOO MANY BUTS recently……..they were out of platelets and had to have some brought in from an outside source.

They did end up giving her the injection anyway and had her hold bags of ice on her thighs to help her blood clot. (Platelets help your blood to clot and when they are low you are more susceptible to nose bleeds and other uncontrolled bleeding from cuts or bad bruising.) After the injections, they have to observe Angelica for 3 hours to make certain that she doesn’t have a serious allergic reaction and so if they had waited for a couple of hours until the platelets came in and then gave the platelets over an hours time period and then gave the intra-muscular injections and then watched her for the 3 hours…..well, they wouldn’t have been able to leave the hospital until after 7:30pm. This way, they were able to leave and get home by 6pm. So, it cut a few hours off the day, which was nice.

Angelica felt pretty good on Tuesday during the day, but started to feel a bit off by the time they got home…..She ate about half of her dinner and then started to really struggle with nausea. She tried valiantly to not barf but about 10:30pm she just couldn’t fight anymore. It was not pretty and it was the start of a very long, very nasty night.

We were up ALL night with her barfing and barfing and barfing and nothing was helping.

Finally she fell asleep around 5am and slept until the next “episode” at 7am. She managed to eat a tiny bit of breakfast, took her meds and around 10:30am was having a hard time keeping her eyes open or being able to sit up and so I sent her off to bed. She slept hard, only waking for me to give her some more anti-nausea meds at 11am and then slept until 2pm.

When she woke up, she ate some soup and crackers and seemed to look and act a little perkier than she had been. She seemed to be acting like she might be on the mend in the afternoon. Although, she was still pretty tired; she tried to eat some dinner and then when the other kids went to bed around 8pm….she did too.

I had planned on going to an exercise class with my sister and so I dragged myself off to the class and although it wasn’t my best class, for having next to no sleep, it wasn’t too bad.

I wondered how the night would go for us, but aside from our two littlest men tag teaming each other and managing to wake us every other hour, it was a pretty quiet night.

This morning, I was so tired, I couldn’t get up and so Jon got the kids up and off to school and I was surprised to hear that Geli had been up and at ’em like nothing was wrong…..AWESOME!

Her and Jon headed off to a BC BioMedical Lab to get her blood work done to see if she’d need another transfusion tomorrow and then they came home.

I asked Geli if she’d like to make some buns or bread with me and she was quite excited by the idea. If Geli was excited…..Siah was ECSTATIC! He LOVES to cook and bake. I’m not usually so excited as he makes quite a mess and making buns is already quite a messy endeavor, but I figured we could try to make it work.

Here is Siah, excited by his little bit of dough. (We were at “waiting for it to rise” stage)

Cheese

In this next picture you can the “mess” a bit clearer…..Siah really “gets into” his baking.

Flour Everywhere

I told Geli that this could be a “Home Ec.” class and that part of the Home Ec. mark always included the clean up.

Cleaning Up

We waited for the dough to rise and then punched it down, then it rose again and we punched it down again and then broke the dough up to make Cinnamon Buns, Coconut Buns, Cheese Buns and Plain Buns. The Coconut Buns are baking, but here are the rest of the buns still rising.

Buns, Buns, Everywhere

Angelica and Jon have gone to the High School to meet with her teachers. Based on her number today, she will be able to attend school on Monday. (They are trending upward, and should be okay for Monday.) She has more chemo on Tuesday, but should be good to go for Wednesday through the following Monday. Then she starts the Third Round of her treatment on Tuesday September 21st and that stage requires her to be admitted for 3-4 days every 2 weeks.

We are praying that Angelica would remain healthy and be able to attend school over this next week and a bit and that she would totally enjoy her school time and be able to feel integrated in with all her other class mates. Also that our other kids would remain healthy and not pick up any illness from the other kids in their school.

First Days

I’m blown away that we’ve made it to the first day of school. That means that we’re in September and wasn’t it only like yesterday on June 16th that our world was rocked….

The whole summer has managed to slip right passed us and here we are staring fall in the face as it comes barreling towards us at full speed.

Xandra and Jeremy are headed to school for…….are you ready for it……..an hour. I was tempted to just keep them home as the excitement of getting up and getting ready is completely chaotic and them to only have them home and “bored” in a hour…..well, that’s hardly even enough time to get a cup of coffee, sit down and enjoy it….throw in a couple of trips to the toilet for Siah, a feeding for Judah and well……so much for an hour of quiet time, eh?

Oh well….there is always Wednesday and let me tell you, I’m looking forward to Wednesday.

DSC_0516Jon and Geli are headed into an appointment at Children’s Hospital. They need to be there for 10:15am and once there, they need to find out Geli’s counts (which at last report were brutal, almost non-existent low and are expected to be even lower), then she has two intra-muscular injections (one in each thigh) of a chemo med, and one IV chemo med and then…….they come home. We are hoping, hoping, HOPING that the rest of this week is SO boring and that we have absolutely no medical updates on how Geli is doing because there is absolutely NOTHING to report on…..that would be the most awesome week ever.

(This is the most recent picture I have of Geli. She is growing up to be such a beautiful young lady.)

She is doing well. She is still a bit nauseous and gags and dry heaves from time to time. This is particularly frustrating as she is on 2 types of drugs to kill the nausea 24/7 and a third one if things are still bad. I hate that she’s on that much medicine all the time but if the alternative is barfing, well….that’s worse and we’ll do what we have to not deal with that. She has pretty much gained back most of the weight that she lost in her two to three week barfing stint.

We finally got a referral to a podiatrist regarding her toes and he was able to help some. He’s been able to alleviate some of the swelling and irritation which helps with the pain, but the biggest concern is with the infection in the tissue surrounding the toenails. With her White Blood Counts too low to be able to fight any infection, she must be on an antibiotic. What we’d really like to see is a miracle with her toenails growing out quickly and all infection gone.

She is annoyed and frustrated with the sheer number of pills she needs to swallow multiple times in a day. Its hard to “have” to be always responsible and take all your meds and drink 2+ Litres of water and eat at all the right times. She is doing well, but we can tell that it wears on her sometimes. There is so much for a 13 year old to be dealing with and really, no child should be dealing with all of this.

School will be interesting this year. Geli is excited about starting Grade 8 and I think that having something to do will be so good for her. She has definitely perked up since we started talking about school and school work and routines and supplies. We bought her an Agenda and she’s even started filling it out already with the dates of her Chemo appts and other dates that she knows in regards to school. She is enrolled in the local High School and will attend when her counts are good enough, but will also do a fair amount of work at home or in the hospital. There is a meeting at the school scheduled for this Thursday and we should have more info after that meeting.

We are in the final stretch of this second stage of the chemotherapy treatment, and the third stage is scheduled to start on Tuesday September 21 as long as her counts are good.

We just keep moving one step forward day by day and hoping and praying for the best. This is not an easy road and I can’t help but think of others who have been through this or similar roads and I feel sick that I didn’t understand or know or realize the extent of what they were going through, I’m so entirely grateful to everyone who is walking along side of us. There are times when Jon and I feel so overwhelmed and burdened and yet we know that we are not alone, and even in our darkest moments of pain and fatigue or when we “feel” alone we know that there are so many (YOU) standing with us and supporting us with your love and prayers and thoughts. It helps us to keep on fighting, and so once again – We thank you!

So Much More…

Things have been quiet around this here blog, not because of a lack of things happening, but exactly the opposite…

To make a looooooong story short(er), Angelica’s counts are low….like really REALLY LOW! This is good and bad.

It’s good because the meds are working the way they should, and Geil’s body is responding to the meds and it’s bad because she is at a much greater risk for infection right now.

The infection in her feet is still present and right now it’s bothering her. There is infection in the tissue surrounding the toenails but it’s not in the blood which is a good thing. Her feet are hurting and she does not really have enough “infection fighting cells” to get rid of the infection. This means that we need to go back onto antibiotics to try and back the infection down so that it stays in check.

We’d love prayer that her toenails would grow out quickly and not be ingrown anymore. That the infection in the tissue would be completely gone and that the new antibiotic that she’s on would not affect her stomach. We believe that it was the original antibiotic that caused the massive stomach pain, nausea, vomiting and the subsequent weight loss…..

I’m feeling quite nervous about putting her back onto oral antibiotics but the alternative is hospitalization and no one wants that for her….especially over toes.

We really need the whole issue with the toes to be resolved and the Dr believes it could be 2-3 months before her toenails grow out sufficiently to make this a non factor…..that’s not cool.

Aside from that, we are feeling a bit discouraged and feeling like we’ve been hit one too many times recently. We’ve had to fix our van, our washing machine is showing signs that it’s gonna bite the dust shortly, Jon lost his phone a few weeks ago, and on Sunday morning he put his computer on the roof of the van while he got something else ready, and then somehow managed to drive away with it still on the roof. Our minds have just been too full and overloaded with too many things. It stayed for the ride until the highway and then crashed at a 100 kilometers per hour. Needless to say, it did not survive the crash and he lost a HUGE project he was working on for his Programming Business.

He had some of the stuff on his laptop backed up but not everything and while nothing is irreplaceable….it’s gonna take time and energy, both of which are on short supply at this point. It also makes you feel a bit frustrated and stupid when you make mistakes or cause accidents like this….ones that could have been avoided or that you wouldn’t normally make but because you are trying to juggle so many different things……..

There is just so much more to deal with, to talk about to share, to go through, to do…..there is just so much more, and so we ask for your prayers for us all.

…..and so we carry on….

Well, we took Geli into a BC Biomedical Lab to get her blood work done today. The results from the panel done today determine whether she waits a week to start the second half of this stage of chemo or whether she moves forward as planned.

I’m not really certain which one I’m rooting for more. Am I hoping that the results are great so that she can carry on and hopefully we get to finish this journey sooner rather than later OOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRR……..am I hoping that her counts are just a little low so that she gets an extra week to “recover and rest” before we head back into it all.

Both options have their benefits and yet this all sucks.

Jon woke her up this morning to take her to the lab and she ended up “rushing a bit” and “pushing herself” and that resulted in her barfing up her meds….HER VERY EXPENSIVE MEDS that she just flushed down the toilet this morning. SUCKS! But, she did manage to get the meds into her system eventually and then they headed up to the lab.

Well, we got the phone call with her results and her counts look great. They are almost up to the low end of normal.

And so….we carry on.

I’m a bit concerned that she’s still barfing, and that she still sometimes feels “off” even while on a triple med cocktail. She is slowly eating more and so…and so…..and so we carry on.

This is such a crazy brutal journey. I had no idea what people who had/have cancer go through and I know that every journey is different and that each person responds to treatment differently, but this is brutal. To watch your child go through this process is horrible. I want to make this all go away for her and I can’t. She has to walk through this and we get to walk along side of her and pray for her to have the strength to carry on and then we carry her when she is too weak, but we keep on moving forward. One day this will all be a distant memory……

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.

Silence Filled With Thankfulness

Photo 22
I’m sitting here in the silence of my home. The baby is squirming in his sleep and Angelica is sleeping on the couch across the room from me.

My sister, Michelle, took Xandra camping. My sister, Debbie, took Jeremy camping, and my parents took Siah camping. Yes, they are all camping together. It’s hard being here and not with them…but it is what it is and it’s not forever….again, this is just a season and we will go camping again, hopefully next year!

I should be doing laundry and cleaning the bathrooms and vacuuming the upstairs hall and bedrooms, and cleaning the boys room and tidying the kitchen, but I’m not…..I’m just sitting.

Sometimes, you just have to sit and breathe….and I need to do that right now.

Often when I do slow down long enough to think about all of this, I’m struck by how blessed we have been. I think of how much love we’ve been shown by so many. It’s truly awe inspiring.

I’m so thankful to everyone who has helped us and given to us in any measure. We are so grateful to everyone who has in someway shared this “load” with us. There are times that we feel crushed (but not destroyed) under the weight of all of this and when we shift our focus off of how difficult this all is, it’s easier to see that there are so many standing around with us carrying a piece of this or even propping us up. Every meal, every gift card, every package, every gift, every comment, every prayer, every e-mail or Facebook message, every donation, every little thing no matter how big or how small, has truly impacted us.

You are all so kind, thoughtful and generous. Your love comes from near and far and wraps around us and helps to carry us through….and in the silence of today…..I think about you all and I’m so thankful.

One Move At A Time

Angelica is an AMAZING Monopoly player. If you have any doubts, you should challenge her to a game and unless you have some serious mad skills…..she will whoop your butt. She routinely wins around here and really it shouldn’t even be considered winning as it’s more like “slaughtering” whoever she is playing against.

We’re playing a little too much Monopoly this summer….and I’m not the hugest fan of the game.

She’s been feeling pretty crappy and I’m cautiously optimistic that she’s turned/turning the corner and is slowly feeling better.

Her temperature’s have been just on the border of heading in the wrong direction and that in and of itself is a HUGE stressor on Jon and I.

We end up wondering if it’s the start of an infection or if it’s just a random high-ish temperature or if she’s fighting off something…..the what if’s are brutal.

We have been instructed to take her temperature in the morning when she wakes and in the evening before bed. So we take the evening temperature on Monday night and it reads in at a 37.6F. Her temps are normally around 36.6F and so this is a whole degree up. So we send her to bed, pack some bags (just in case a midnight run is necessary), pick up the house, throw on some laundry and try to tidy up any loose ends that we can, in case she ends up in the hospital.

Just before we go to bed, we re-do the temperature and it’s now up to 37.8F so it appears to be up…now what? which way is it headed, who knows? At this point, the baby wakes up and we’re up for an extra half an hour soothing him back to sleep. We set the alarm clock for 2 hours from now to check her again, to see which way her temps are going and just as we lay down, Josiah comes wandering into our room crying about something. At this point, you gotta just laugh…or cry and well, laughing seems like a good idea, no?

So, we get Siah back to sleep and just as we’re drifting off…..

The ALARM GOES OFF! Yah!

Go and check her temp and it’s down at 37.6F. Check it again in another 2 hours and it’s down to 37.4, in another 2 hours it’s at 37.2 and at this point it’s only a bit more until it’s time to wake up…..and so we wake up exhausted.

Factor in another 1 or 2 night time feeds and one more crying 3 year old and possibly a toilet trip or two and you pretty much have our nights right now. It’s exhausting just typing and re-reading it right now.

A couple of nights in a row like this and we’re feeling a bit run down, both emotionally and physically.

Again, it’s the not knowing that’s brutal…..

Geli’s also been feeling so crappy and we can’t pinpoint why? Could be the regular crappy effects from the chemo. It could be a virus. It could be the start of some infection and yet last week we ruled out infection, so unless something else new is starting….we’re not exactly sure WHY she’s continuing to barf and not eat and not drink.

Today has been a better day than yesterday and yesterday was better than the day before, but that’s not really saying much.

To explain that, she managed to keep down about 200mls of water yesterday. Everything else she barfed up….. She should be drinking about 2 Litres a day which is 2,000mls of water. She managed to keep down her lunch, the second time around and eat a decent dinner but it all came back up….then she ate a quarter of an apple.

I stress about how she can possibly heal and grow and get better when she’s not eating or drinking and then today she’s managed to drink 1 Litre so far and had a piece of toast, a hot dog (gross, but she wanted it) and some Chicken Veggie Soup. She’s working on her next 500mls (half a litre) and we’ve added some electrolytes to it hoping that will also help.

She is feeling better today…..and we’re left not knowing if she’s just a little more hydrated and if that’s making the difference or is it was viral and she’s slowly getting better or another possibility to throw into the mix is that she’s has WICKED amounts of stomach acid and she’s been put back on a prescription strength antacid and after almost 3 days on that…it’s starting to make a difference in the amount of pain that she’s been in (in her stomach – no heartburn, just pain in the pit of her stomach).

So……are we on the mend? We sure hope so because she’s scheduled to carry on with the second half of this current phase of treatment, next Tuesday…..if her counts are good. Which, as of Monday (two days ago) they were not. They were WAY DOWN and once again, she is at a serious risk for infection.

But, we continue to move forward, one step at a time and we trust we will get through this….it’s not easy and we’re really tired but we’re carrying on! And that’s really all we can do!