April 1, 2006

It seems hard to believe it is April already! Not a single person at the hospital has even attempted an April Fool's Joke, so it is quite unlike being in a building full of elementary school children.

Leah did not sleep well last night at all. She is getting two pain meds via a spinal catheter. In her port she is getting a continuous drip of morphine and then she also was getting an extra dose in her port every two hours. Needless to say she was quite well drugged and the more she was getting the more agitated she was becoming. Instead of sleeping peacefully she was very irritated and continued to move around and could not relax. Today we decided we would try to discourage the additional dose of morphine every two hours and let some of the medicines wear off a bit. The results have been quite good. She is still somewhat out of it and can be talking to you one minute and have her eyes rolling in the back of her head the next, but she has been able to take a couple of lengthy, restful naps that have helped out a lot. She has also sat up (with help) and even sat on my lap for a bit. She is very confined as to how much she can move so this has all taken place in her bed with me and a nurse or two assisting her so she does not pull out any tubes. Today has also been the best so far in terms of her appetite. She is still only allowed liquids and that continues to be irritating to her. She finally consented to trying a lemon Italian Ice and sucking the juice from an orange as well as sipping on milk and pop. The doctors are unconcerned about this and would rather she take it slow until her bowels wake up more. The last thing anyone wants is for her to vomit and make her incision even more painful than it already is. We are also still in PICU. This is rather nice because of the individual attention she receives. We love our normal unit, but they are busy and have a lot of patients right now and Leah requires a lot of work. Our nurse could be helping us every five minutes it seems at different points.

Overall we are still quite pleased that she is doing as well as she is and appears to be feeling a bit better each day. Certainly it is slow going, but we are moving in the right direction. We ask for continued prayers for her healing as well as prayers for her chemotherapy's effectiveness and an AFP reading that returns to a normal level (they will be checking this soon and while tumor removal is the cornerstone of her treatment, an elevated AFP indicates cancer is still present). We continue to be so thankful for the prayers, messages, gifts, and kindness of friends, family and strangers as well during this time in our lives.