Sunday, April 17, 2016

Schreiber World Update.

It's snowing here in Colorado. Nothing like waking up to 6 inches in the middle of April. I'll drive down through it today to tag out Tiffany and be with Abby tonight.

Lots going on of course right now. Abby is still in a lot of pain. Wakes up pretty sore and then has to catch up by pressing the pain button every 10 minutes. They took her off of the pump for an hour yesterday afternoon to give her antibiotics and that was really rough, lots of pain. So, they gave her a large dose of Dilaudid and that knocked her out for a bit. Today when they unhook her they will try to give her a large dose before they unhook to help control the pain.

Basically it's just a waiting game right now. Anna's stem cells are finding their way to Abby's bone marrow and grafting in. At the same time Abby's blood continues to die off from the effects of last weeks chemo. She has no immunity right now so she is on an antiviral, an anti-fungal, and antibiotics. She does anti-everything mouth care 3 times a day and anti-fungal nose spray (that burns) 2 or 3 times a day too at 4 squirts each side. Not her favorite thing. She tries to eat during the day but it is really painful so instead they are feeding her through her IV for now. Basically the routine is: mouth care, 3 walks, 1 bath, and fill the rest of the time with distraction via Amazon Prime, Netflix or something else on the Roku (yes, I was proud that I got that to work on the hospital network).

On the home front Anna is doing better day by day. Still pretty sore and tired. They did take a lot of marrow, gave her back her own unit of blood and still left her short by about 1/3 of her blood volume. She'll be taking iron pills for a month or 2 and drinking lots of fluids.

Lily is doing ok too. She could really use some attention as the focus has been off of her for a long time. She also was pretty much quarantined to her room for the 8 days before transplant since she caught a cold on the night before Abby's radiation. At least we kept Anna well enough to give the marrow -that was a stressful week for me at home and I'm glad it's over.

Life continues to roll on along. We have our shipment from Japan coming in soon. They tried to deliver it the week before radiation but I had to ask them to hold off since we really couldn't have a bunch of boxes that have been on a boat, in the damp, in the dark... delivered to our house. Hopefully I can reschedule that for next week. Do want some more clothes options but I'm not really looking forward to the memories that get delivered with those boxes. But the girls are excited about their bikes and other items that they had to leave in Japan. It's weird to look back at that day that we left with 11 suitcases, closed the door to a nice clean house, and then never came back. So surreal.

More life keeps rolling as well. I've been trying to get some traction for next year with my Maker Education Consulting practice. It's been going ok and I've had a lot of calls with schools. Unfortunately they all tend to get scheduled during some appointment with Abby. I had a great call with a school during Abby's Broviac surgery. And another great call after Abby's first radiation therapy. It's been exciting to get a new business going (but also tempered by Abby's hard times) Hopefully it will be a good part-time venture for now. In other life news, I punted on the taxes last week and filed an extension. Making money in Yen for part of the year in Japan didn't really fit very well into any category of TurboTax;)

Enjoy your Spring day whether it is snowing, sunny or cloudy... it's still Spring!



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Strength and prayers to you all. Hopefully the toughest part will be over soon and you can begin the process of getting your life back to some normalcy. Hang in there Abby! It is sure to get better soon. Warm wishes from all your friends here at ASIJ. - Cathy Berghahn