Breathing a sigh of relief

Kaitlyn had to have a new IV placed this morning with some blood draws and another IV placed tonight because the one placed this morning already gave out. Other than that, it was a fairly quiet day at the hospital. There were no fevers again today, but she has developed a horrible rash that they are treating with topical cream and Benadryl for the itch. It is driving her absolutely crazy. This is THE LAST thing she needed on top of everything else. Poor kid.

The doctor told us today that her blood work looks great, all within the normal ranges. At first, this scared us because we thought that the chemo was supposed to suppress her white blood cells, but it didn't. So we assumed that if it didn't kill off the healthy cells then it probably didn't kill the leukemic cells either. The longer we thought about it, the more questions we had. Finally, around 9pm, we asked our nurse to call the doctor. He called us back and after speaking with him, we felt much better. Basically, the fact that all her blood counts are normal is great news. It means that there is no immediate toxicity to the high dose Methotrexate. The Lecovorin Rescue is given to "rescue" the healthy cells, but it does not rescue the leukemic cells. In an ideal situation, there would be no suppression of the white cells and that is basically what they are seeing in Kaitlyn. In short, she is kicking butt like a trooper.

They are talking about sending us home tomorrow if all continues to go well. I hope I can find my way home after all this time - I kinda forget how to get there :-(