Thurday Clinic Visit - Maintenance Round 15

Today's clinic visit consisted of the following:
1) Port access
2) a blood draw
3) Vincristine (Chemo)

Today, we were in the "infusion room" and we were the "rowdy corner". While we were waiting for Kaitlyn's CBC counts to come back, we were laughing and joking with nurse Helen & nurse practitioner, Jen. All the while, Kaitlyn was being fully entertained by 2 of the childlife staff and a Hole in the Wall Gang volunteer.

Later in the visit, we introduced ourselves to another couple in the infusion room that had a little boy around the same age as Kaitlyn. Well, come to find out, he and Katie are only a week apart in age AND we were in the same Lamaze class at Umass Memorial..lol. How weird is that? We ended up staying and letting Katie play with their son for a little while after she got her chemo because she is so sick of being bored at home. I feel so bad keeping her cooped up at home, but there are just too many germs out there right now. Anyway, they were a very nice couple and I hope to run into them again soon!

I can honestly say that outside of the obvious (port access and chemo administration) we actually had a good time at clinic today...I never thought I would say that. Maybe it's because I am sick of being cooped up at home too and any human interaction is fun for me at this point...lol..

This cycle will last 3 weeks and consist of the following:
Vincristine - Day 1 (same dose as previous cycles)
Methotrexate (oral at home chemo) - Days 1, 8 & 15 (increased dose from last cycle)
6-mercapturine (oral at home chemo) - Days 1-14 (same dose as the last cycle)
Dexamethasone (oral at home steroid)- Days 1-5 (same dose as the last cycle)

Dr. Keuker finally decided to increase her Methotrexate dose because her white blood cell counts have been consistently higher than they should be. Hopefully the new dose doesn't bring her counts too low or we won't be able to start the next cycle on time. We'll see what happens in 3 weeks when we go back to clinic on February 11, 2010.