Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Good News!

So it is looking like Abby will be discharged sometime next week.  We are blown away!   Her monocytes are continuing to increase.  Her ANC is 90 today.  Once it reaches 500 and stays there or goes higher for 3 consecutive days, she is able to leave the hospital.  In preparation for that we are working on getting her meds to oral, instead of IV.  That is a slow process as some of them don't sit well in her stomach.  On the stomach note, she also has to be eating.  That is slowly happening.  After  2 weeks of mucositis, radiation, and chemo her stomach is on strike I think.  She has been getting IV nutrition for the past 2 weeks so it's a matter of stimulating her appetite, having her try some things even though they don't taste like much right now, and then having her stomach keep it down.  She is being weened off of her pain meds as well.  If all of that can come together and she doesn't get any infections she will be out of here!  We will be behind the hospital in the apartment since we will be checking in a few times a week at the clinic.  At around day 30 she will have another bone marrow test to see if the new cells are Anna's or hers.  Obviously, we hope they are all Anna's.  If they aren't, they have steps they can take to encourage Anna's cells to take over and Abby's to give in.  Mark and Abby and I will attend a discharge class Wednesday to learn all the "rules" of caring for Abby once she leaves the hyper-clean hospital environment.  We've taken the class to learn how to take care of her central line so we can check that off the list.  I think there is also a meeting with the pharmacy to go over all the meds she will be on.  Oh, and we have a day in the hospital where we have to be in charge of all of Abby's cares.  Mouth, nose, meds, bath, central line.... to make sure we are able to care for her.  It's funny, I was thinking they should have done that with us when she was born before we got to take her home from the hospital!  Of course, if that were true none of us would have been able to go home with our kids!

Anna continues to get back to normal- at least physically anyway.  The life of an adolescent in the throws of cancer is nothing close to normal.   Lily is doing well, lots of energy and keeping us all laughing (or tearing our hair out, which for some of us threatens what little hair we have....not naming any names).  Anna and Lily are home doing school right now.  Mark is getting some work done at a coffee shop close by.  My folks took a much needed break for a couple days and are staying in the apartment here in Denver re-cooping.  Abby is playing with some Lego Elves kits she got and is feeling really well today.

As always, we appreciate your prayers and support of us as we walk it out.  It seems like we have come up the down side of the BMT and are now on a solid road to healthy.  It feels good.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

TOTALLY AWESOME. ...and the smile never fades. ♡♡♡♡

Unknown said...

TOTALLY AWESOME. ...and the smile never fades. ♡♡♡♡

Unknown said...

Praise the Lord! It's so wonderful to see how God is answering the prayers for Abby!

Katie said...

Wow! So glad she can almost go home! Is she a candidate for Brent's Place if she needs a clean environment? I've heard good things about it!

Unknown said...

Love that smile and the sparkle in her eyes!