December 6, 2005

Leah had a great day! We were expecting the worst since she began chemotherapy last night at 11 p.m., but the nausea we anticipated has not appeared so far. The first drug she has taken as part of her protocol is called Cisplatin. It is quite high-powered. The nurse who administered her drugs when they began had to wear a gown as part of the safety precautions. Leah had to get up at 11, 1, 3, 5 and 7 to go to the bathroom. It is important for her to empty her bladder, but she was not happy with having her sleep disturbed every two hours. So, while she is not nauseous today, she is crabby, and quite tired. She has managed to avoid a nap all day long.

Chris and I visited with Jane who does the chemotherapy education. We know more about red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets and hemoglobin than we ever wanted to. And, we still have more to learn. Jane's job is to teach us about the many things that may happen while we are away from the hospital and to prepare us for every bad thing you can imagine. She told us she wants to scare us and get our attention, and she certainly did. Right now Leah went into chemo. with her blood counts looking very good-impressive numbers when compared with where they will end up. The only number that is already rather low is her hemoglobin level. They would like to see this number around 12 and hers is around 9. This means she is already a little anemic. As we look at information about hepatoblastoma, that is a characteristic of this type of cancer. This number will be watched closely to see if she will need a blood transfusion of some kind.

While many of you may already know this, the idea of chemotherapy is to kill the bad cells in her body. The cancer cells in her body are the fastest growing, and so they will be the most affected, yet, the good cells will be affected, too. Hair loss is almost a certainty since all three drugs she will eventually be using cause this. And while we will be concerned with colds and othe viruses, Jane was very adamant that Leah's worst enemy will be her own body. The bugs that we naturally carry around on us and the bacteria we produce will be much more harmful to her than viruses she may be exposed to. As a way to try and prepare for this Leah will begin taking an antibiotic, bactrum, to try and suppress some of the body's natural bacteria. She will also begin taking Nystatin to try and eliminate mouth sores since the open sore is another way to increase infection. Another drug, Mylax, is being added to her juice so that she does not become constipated since this is yet another side effect of a medication she will begin tomorrow. In case you were wondering, Chris and I will both have to review our notes quite carefully tonight in case there is a quiz over all of this tomorrow. We are on information overload.

Leah had more visitors today: Pastor Feldt, our neighbor Che (who got in on some music therapy and humored us by playing some instruments with us) and Jodi. Leah enjoyed the activities from yesterday so much that today we went to make a beaded bracelet. She liked this, too. Kristi, our nurse, is back after three days off, but because this is a teaching hospital we had Teresa help us today since many nurses will have to learn from Leah's chemotherapy protocol. Leah actually requested to see Kristi-and even smiled for her.

It appears that Leah is too tired for us to take care of her hair-do. We have not done a thing with it in almost a week. If her babysitter, Karen, could see it she would just cringe. There may truly be no hope, and perhaps we should hope it all falls out overnight since I cannot imagine being very successful in combing through it.

Leah has fallen asleep very early now and has just drifted off as I type. Maybe Chris and I can take control of the remote control and watch the Hawks play UNI. We are still hoping to be released on Thursday, and spend some time at home.

Once again, our emails are: tina@forbin.net, and ckristau@forbin.net for those of you who do not want to post on our blog. We continue to look forward to all messages we receive and the many people -some we do not even know, or know well- who have extended themselves to support us, and pray for Leah.