We are home, a day and a half felt like an eternity at the hospital! She never got a fever again while we were there, so they let us go home. About an hour before we were set to leave, the nurse brought in the CBC results from this morning, and I noticed her ANC had dropped to 100! Remember when we arrived the day before, it was 4700! When the resident doc came in to tell me we could go home, I asked her if she had noticed, because no one had even told me she was neutropenic! She looked shocked, they had not even looked at her results and were about to send us home. So she talked with the other doctors, and since her culture had not grown anything, they decided to just send her home with IV antibiotics again. So we had to wait a couple more hours to get her first dose and make sure she had no reaction to it, everything seems to be slow motion at the hospital when you are dying to get home! I want to just do it all for them! In their defense, they have to wait for the pharmacy, I was just itching to high tail out of there. I was laughing with the oncologist that the hospital felt like a prison, so she said Brinley was going home on "probation". Any incidents (fevers) and she would be right back in there. We got a good laugh out of that. They expect her numbers would stay low since she crashed so early after the chemo, so we are probably hanging out alone this Christmas, this is the lowest her ANC has ever been.

Her red blood is low, so they want to check her Monday to see if she needs a transfusion. They considered it at the hospital, but the onc and I agreed to wait until she really needed it, since she seems to recover and has only needed 1 transfusion so far.

I was so frustrated when she got her fever. I called the oncologist when Brinley got it and tried to talk her out of making us go to the hospital. She gets this fever every time, 2 days after her chemo, and it's never an infection. I know we are better safe than sorry, and I would much rather have that approach by our doctors, but David's party was that night and we were on our way, and I was really excited to go hang out with the people he works with, some adult time!! Oh, how I hate to miss the fun! I was so close to telling the oncologist that this whole cancer thing was sure inconveniencing our lives, but I was pretty sure she wouldn't think I was funny, so I kept it to myself. Lol. She said we needed to be there within the hour, so I said okay, and brought my disappointed self and Brinley to the ER. Ugh. It was really awful. They took longer than usual to get us a room, and it was late, so Brinley was grouchy, and just taking her vitals made her scream like crazy! She wouldn't calm down, and couldn't take off her mask, she was yanking on it and flopping her body all over. I finally just sighed and let her get it out, I'd be pretty ticked too.

Yep, they didn't let us go today. They want to make sure the culture comes back clean tomorrow, so they want to watch for fevers in the meantime. So far she hasn't had any. She was going on 4 hours of sleep all day and wouldn't nap, so it was a rough day with lots of meltdowns and puffy eyes. We finally had them give her benadryl at 7:30 and she's sleeping now, hopefully all night. I'll know more tomorrow.

Brinley got admitted to the hospital last night. She got a fever right after our party for Cancer Families, and wound up at the ER from 9-2am. They decided to admit her at 2AM even though her ANC was 4500 because her heartrate was really high, and after 2 bags of fluids, it wasn't coming down. That made them nervous, they said it can be a sign of infection. I suspect she'll be released today as long as her HR is okay, since her numbers are so good, unless there is an infection. I'll keep posting updates, hopefully we are home this afternoon. I came home at 3 and David stayed there, I'm heading up there soon so he can go to work.

Today was clinic day, she made counts yesterday so she was able to get her chemo. Her ANC was 1600, that's pretty high, so they escalated the methotrexate to 130ml's, and I am a little nervous about that because she was at 100ml's her first dose when she crashed. Last time she only got 80ml. So we will see how she does with this amount, she would be crashed right in time for Christmas, so I'm kind of planning on having a small family Christmas this year...we'll see. She also got the vincristine and the chemo in her spine, so she was sedated. She did great with the sedation today, thank goodness. I get so nervous every time. The anesthesiologist gave us the option of putting a tube into her lungs so if she vomited again she wouldn't inhale it, but he said she'll be sore from it, so we decided not to do it. That was the right choice, she didn't have any problems at all. She woke up pretty happy, so she must be getting used to it. Clinic is always is so exhausting, it seems to take them forever just to do simple things, there is so much waiting involved. Our appt was 8:00, and I was really hoping to get her chemo in before the lumbar puncture at 9:30 in the RTU, because then we can just go home from there. But we were a few minutes shy, so we had to come back up after her LP and wait again. We got done around noon. They said she bled more than usual on her LP, so I'm watching for pain and stuff like that. I'm gearing up for a rough few days, but we feel ready!! We've had a nice break...