Well, we made it through the first ten weeks, but it hasn't been uneventful.
After the last post, she got a fever again, but luckily it didn't quite hit the threshold for going to the ER (it sure was close though), and the next day it was down, so we were able to avoid a return trip to the hospital. The week following was pretty uneventful.
We had week 9 of chemo on 3/13. Kendall and I headed down by ourselves and sent Brett to run some errands and meet us down there. After talking to the nurse practitioner (NP), we decided to give Kendall Benadryl before starting to see if that helped reduce the fevers afterwards. It didn't bother Kendall, and made her a little sleepy, so she fell asleep right as treatment started. Meanwhile, I kept thinking of more things for Brett to do, so I told him to just finish it all up and head back to work, since Kendall and I were doing fine and things seemed to moving ahead of schedule.
I sent a text to my sister in law about noon saying that we were almost finished. When the nurse came in to switch Kendall back to her fluids after receiving all her chemo, I headed to the bathroom. When I got back to the room, I noticed that she was looking a little red and splotchy. The nurse and I weren't too concerned, but when I changed her diaper, I noticed she was getting some hives on her legs. The NP came back in right about then, and said that she was having a reaction the the chemo. The had to hurry and give her more benadryl and hydrocortisone, and I had to call Brett and tell him that I changed my mind and he needed to come.
Luckily, that was the worst of it, and as soon as she had that second dose of Benadryl, her skin started going back to normal. We spent several hours waiting to make sure everything was okay, but nothing popped up again and she didn't get any fevers. That night at home, she did get a very low grade fever again, but nothing to worry about.
After getting all those extra medicines, Kendall ate great all weekend. It was a nice change of pace! We were still worried about her numbers and if she would get her last dose on time, but it seems like those extra meds helped that too, because she was back up for week 10.
We were a little nervous about how week 10 would go. It was supposed to be the last week of "induction", but after the reaction the week before, we didn't know if we were even going to go through with it. After talking to her doctor and NP, we decided to do several other "pre-meds" and go ahead with it. She was watched very closely, but this time had no reactions at all!
Of course, nothing is ever easy, so the following day, Friday - after telling a friend that she was feeling great, Kendall started running a fever. She fell asleep watching a movie with me, and when she woke up, her temp was 101.5 - that's really high for someone with a central line. I called in, and they told me we could go to clinic, so I rushed to get ready, only to have them call me back and say we needed to go to the ER :-/
We got there, and luckily her numbers were still high, so they let us leave after some antibiotics and bloodwork. Woo hoo!
Just a few more tests for the following week, and an MRI on the schedule for 4/1 before moving into maintenance mode!
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