Day 15, Chemo Round 1

Auntie Meeks swooped in to supervise
the sharing-one-minute-squabbling-the-next
siblings while I took a rare mid-day nap.

Jade was right in the middle of a bath when the doctors came around for rounds this morning.  So, instead of participating in the "walking rounds" in the hallway as I usually do, the team came into Jade's room so I could participate from bathside.

Jade was intrigued by the team of six or seven coming into her room. She waved at them enthusiastically with her bubble covered hands and then quietly asked me, "Is this a meeting?"

As it turned out, the review of her counts (which haven't changed much since yesterday), threshold for transfusions, protocol to follow in case of a fever, etc., was not as intriguing as Jade might have anticipated. "This is boring," she whispered to me after a couple of minutes. Jade has been whispering in plain sight a lot lately -- sometimes across rooms even -- and seems to believe that no one hears her but me. It's quite funny.   

There are a couple of changes on the horizon.  Tomorrow, the infusions of GCSF will resume and continue until Jade's ANC is high enough to go home for a break. GCSF is a stimulant that encourages cells in the bone marrow to produce more quickly.  Jade received this a couple of weeks ago while she was getting chemotherapy because it also promotes the growth of leukemic stem cells that may be hiding out in the bone marrow; by making the leukemia "baby" cells show themselves during treatment, the intention is to increase the efficacy of the chemotherapy.  The purpose of her receiving the GCSF now is to help her bone marrow and immune system recover from the more potent chemotherapy agents that she is receiving in this course of treatment.

The other change that will take place tomorrow will be the timing of her appetite stimulant, which has been on an every 12-hours rotation.  Twice a day doesn't seem bad, until you consider her scheduled times for the stimulant, which went from 10am/10pm to 8am/8pm.  This meant that we woke her up (shortly after going to sleep) to take something that would make her hungry before she was ready to get up in the morning, or that we gave her the stimulant and made her hungry right before she went to sleep. Either way didn't make much sense... but would explain Jade's sleepy response of "Yes. Chicken," to the nurse's obligatory can-i-get-you-anything question as she left our room this evening after 9:30. 

Tomorrow the schedule for the appetite stimulant will shift to 8am/4pm.

As always, thank you for continuing to pray for Jade and for this course of treatment to be Jade's cure.


Today's Counts
Hemoglobin: 10.6
Platelets: 51
ANC: 0
Monocytes: 0