In December, we went in for our second to last treatment - #9. As usual, Kendall got her fluids ahead of time and then started the huge list of pre-meds to ward off any reactions to the chemo like she had back in March. Once those were finished, we started her on her chemo. Just like last time, she started crying right away and saying her belly hurt. We stopped everything - and she kept crying, then she started throwing up :( It was so terrible to see her so sick and upset. Our nurse practitioner came in, and suggested that she didn't think it was a chemo reaction since "normally" people have a rash as their first symptom rather than the upset stomach. We were all apprehensive, but she suggested that we start the chemo back up.
Within the next 60 seconds, Kendall started turning bright red. First her ears, and then she started getting patchy redness all over. We stopped the chemo immediately. Luckily, she didn't have any airway issues, but it meant that Kendall is officially allergic to the Carboplatin, and she won't be getting that medicine for chemo anymore. Her doctor came to see us even though he wasn't officially our doctor for the day, but he said that based on how her tumor had been reacting, he hoped that we would just be finished after our January MRI.
It ended up being nice for us because Kendall was feeling good for Christmas and we didn't have to worry about her numbers and immune system so much. We hadn't been sure that she would be able to attend the family Christmas celebrations if she was sick from chemo, but since she only had a few minutes of her treatment, she was feeling fine.
Last week, we had to get back into the groove again with appointments. On Monday, Kendall had her hearing test and kidney function tests. She did great with both and results were completely normal. Then Friday we had to take her for her MRI. I don't think that it will ever get easier to watch her go to sleep with the gas and walk away from her, leaving her in the hands of the doctors and nurses. She shows us what a big girl she is though, because when she woke up from sedation, she was just chillin' in the bed eating graham crackers like it was no big deal that we weren't there :)
Unfortunately, because we had an appointment already scheduled to talk about results today, no one called us on Friday to go over results. It was really hard to wait all weekend! On Sunday, our MRI report showed up on MyChart. I thought that I should wait and not read it, but I couldn't wait. I read it anyway, and was happy to see the word "stable"! We knew that was good news, so it made it easier to wait for the appointment today.
It's hard to believe that a year ago today, Kendall really started this chemo journey. It was exactly a year ago, when she had her central line placed on January 13, 2014 and we spent the night in the hospital before her first treatment the next day.
Today, the whole thing comes full circle. We met with her doctor to get the results from her MRI (the tumor is officially stable! It's so much better hearing them say it than reading it in the report), and talk about the plan. The official plan is that she'll be getting her port out this Friday!!!
We'll still have MRIs every 3 months for the next year or two, and we'll be watching that tumor really closely, but for now she's done! It's hard to believe that she'll be able to go play with other kids now, and do fun things like the Children's Museum, and we won't have to worry about germs so much anymore! Thank you so much for sticking by us this past year, and helping us get through it all. I don't know how we would've gotten through this last year of appointments and treatments, without our wonderful family and friends.
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