9/22/08 - Clinic day - What have you done to my child!

Oh.....my....goodness. There is a little monster in my house that I do not recognize. I mean, Brinley has always been a feisty one, (those of you who know her can attest to that), but these steroids are slowly turning her into some kind of species that I am in no way familiar with. They warned me about it, but the first couple of weeks were nothing compared to what we are seeing now. We thought we had just gotten it easy. Each day gets a little worse, and last night was insane! She woke up at around 11 and was eating everything in sight! She would yell for pretzels, then some milk, then some fishie crackers, then some chips, then a shake. This went on all night long! At around 2, David and I agreed to just do shifts, because she wouldn't go back in her bed, so I came down on the couch and he was supposed to wake me up at 4, but he "felt bad" so he let me sleep the rest of the night. So he was up with her pretty much all night feeding the steroid child.

To the clinic visit we went this morning. Things went okay, she screamed the whole time, though. She just wanted to go home. Her ANC was at 230, so we are quarantined this week (those are my words for it, they don't quite say it that way). No being around people for us. Next week she will be off the steroids, that was the good news. The doc said this medication is the biggest complaint of all the parents, so I am hoping if we can make it through this next week, we will make it just fine through the rest of it. And she will get a week off of the chemo next visit too. She'll get the lumbar puncture (spinal tap) and the bone marrow aspirate, then when we get the results from that, she'll be through with the induction phase. So this is the last week of induction! I'll post more later if I can, Brinley is screaming and I better go hold the poor girl, it was a rough day!