scan tomorrow

This is just a quick update but I just wanted to remind everyone that tomorrow is Elsa's scan. 

Over the weekend she had a slight ongoing fever but it never got high enough to require taking her into Lutheran. If we had had to take her in she would have missed the scan because the hospital does not release people until they have been fever free for 48 hours. That was a huge relief. Tomorrow my mom is driving down to Indi and the scan is scheduled for 2pm. We will hopefully know the results of the scan sometime Wednesday.

I'll post as soon as we find out.

Fingers Crossed.

Keep Elsa in your thoughts for her scan Dec 1st

Last week at Riley things went pretty well. It's always good when the doctors don't have a whole lot to talk to you about. Elsa was very active most of the time, but at the end of the week she got a fever for a little while. It's hard because when Elsa is at the hospital she is either tired and sick or crazy and moving everywhere. It's nice to see how quickly she bounces back after not feeling good though, so I won't complain about that. She came home on Sunday evening of the week that she had Chemo. The next day (Monday) she had an I.T. procedure (Chemo in her spine) and that went really well, but that night she started feeling sick. She ended up throwing up four times, but after she started throwing up I went to CVS to fill the prescription that my mom had gotten a few cycles back from Riley. It is a really intense nausea medication for cancer patients and the side effects are really bad, so my mom hadn't wanted to fill the prescription unless she needed to. (Elsa has thrown up a couple times during her treatment, but it has never been a very serious thing.) Anyway, when I went to CVS the guy at the pharmacy counter said that it would be an hour wait to fill the prescription. I told him that the meds were for my sister who has cancer and she was at home throwing up and he told me that he would fill it himself. He had it ready in 10 mins. I thought it was so nice that he would do that because it was really busy in there and he didn't have to do anything special.
That Friday Elsa had a blood transfusion and everything went well with that as well.

Elsa has a scan scheduled for December 1st to check if all of the cancer is gone. There is a chance that there is still some residual tissue. If that is the case they will have to do another biopsy to see if it is cancer or just tissue. If it is cancer then we have to start Chemo again, but if it is tissue then we are done with Chemo. I don't want to get all excited and unrealistic about this because if something shows up on the scan then we still have more to go through. Even if the scan comes back clear, there is still major surgery to remove Elsa's central line.
We aren't quite done with all of this hospital stuff, but hopefully we are getting there soon.

back at Riley

It's been a while since the last time I updated the blog. I feel a little lame always saying the same things and last time we went to Riley nothing new was happening (besides a little Chemo here and there haha). 

Last cycle my mom was really excited because her friend Liz was coming from Colorado and Liz was going to be at Riley for the first couple days then I was planning on coming for a couple days later on in the week. Usually my mom is pretty isolated besides the couple days that I am able to be at Riley, so it was her ideal setup. Unfortunately this was the same time that H1N1 was becoming a big deal and Riley made new visitor policies that we didn't know about until we got there that Monday morning. Liz came to Riley to meet my mom and she wasn't able to stay or even go back to the room briefly because of the new H1N1 policies. It was such a bummer for my mom and for Liz too. I wasn't going to be allowed to come either but as the week went on the rules were loosened a little bit and since I was an adult sibling I was able to come for a couple days. We weren't really supposed to leave our unit at all. That means that we couldn't go to the cafeteria or even the Ronald McDonald house to shower (there is a shower that we were allowed to use on our floor but it is not nearly as nice). It was no fun but we managed.

Al went to Riley for the weekend last cycle so that my mom could come home for Maya's birthday. It was nice to have my mom home with the kids and be able to go out in public and not worry about having to be home to administer medicine or anything like that.

Every cycle before this past one, we have had to go to Lutheran in the middle. We kept worrying that we would have to go there, but Elsa never ended up getting a fever. That was just so nice for everyone. My mom especially enjoyed having such an extended period at home. Last week Elsa's counts dropped low, so we made an appointment for her to get a blood transfusion and platelets. We thought that it would be an overnight stay because somehow we always end up staying longer than we hope. When my mom got to Lutheran they tested Elsa and her counts had all gone up just enough that all they ended up doing was a little bit of hydration and they were home before noon that day. It was such a relief.

Today my mom came down to Riley with Elsa. In the clinic when they checked in Elsa's blood counts were tested and she just barely had counts high enough to start Chemo on time. We have been so lucky to not have to delay any treatments because of her recovery. Our nurse is kind of a jerk but whatever. She just doesn't seem to have any humanity towards us and wants to follow all the rules exactly. My mom and I have always both slept in the room with Elsa all along and she told us that we aren't both allowed to this time. I think we are going to end up "accidentally" both falling asleep in here. haha We are such troublemakers. I don't think they'll wake me up to tell me to go sleep in the family lounge. I'll just tell her to try to sleep in there :) Its no good in there if you couldn't tell. The accomodations in the family lounge aren't too bad, but there are always people going in and out and its noisy from the bathroom and the tv. I would prefer to be in the room anyway just because I want to be here if something happens. I will update in a couple days :) I promise.