little bird little bird jump through my window

Riley

On Monday the 28^th Suze drove my mom and Elsa down to Riley. Elsa was doing really well when they went down to the hospital and she was a good sport about being

 back at the hospital. I went down to Riley that afternoon after work. The IT chemo through her spine went a lot better than last time and Elsa handled the sedation really well. She also came off the Kepra, which was the anti-seizure medication. She isn’t twitchy at all, so that is good news as well. She was feeling well enough to do some craft projects and play with stickers and she was eating well.

There were a couple funny Joes who came to visit while we were at Riley. The first was Joseph Addai from the Colts came to our room to visit Elsa, but we had no idea who he was, so that was a little awkward. He didn't even introduce himself when he came in and we didn't really have anything to say. The other Joe who came to visit was one of the workers at the hospital who come to the rooms to clean and get plates after meals and things like that. Well he came to the room one day and he was wearing a paper crown because it was someone’s birthday and it matched his outfit so we took a picture. It’s a little odd once you start recognizing people who work at the hospital or have the same nurse for more than one visit.

After a final dose of the IT chemo on Friday afternoon (and my mom’s battle to keep Elsa from eating all day because of it), Jess drove them home that Friday evening.

Home
When Elsa came home on Friday she was doing really well. If you didn’t know she was sick you wouldn’t be able to tell by watching her. She was playing and acting like a normal healthy child for the most part. After a couple days she finished her medicine and she was dancing around singing “no more medicine!” She is losing her hair, and she has a pretty legit balding patch on the crown of her head. She does still have quite a bit though and it will be funny to see how much she actually loses because the doctor said that she would lose it all in 3-4 weeks and its already longer than that.

Back at the hospital

Elsa spiked a fever Wednesday night around midnight, so my mom went ahead and took her into Lutheran. She doesn’t have a fever anymore, but her white blood cell counts are at .4. Her hemoglobin was low as well, so she got a blood transfusion on Thursday. She is doing well in the sense that she is laughing and talking, but she doesn’t look that great on paper. The doctor said that if things go as planned that Elsa could come home on Saturday.

She has two more 3 week cycles of Chemo left, so this process could be over much earlier than we had originally planned. We’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best.