May 31st - Week Off

Kayla has now completed the Induction portion of her chemotherapy.  I think of it as the introduction.  Now she has two weeks off and if her blood counts are up to a certain level, she will start the Maintenance part of her treatment.  The Maintenance part will consist of 4 weeks of chemo, 2 weeks off.  That will continue to repeat until she is done with her 60 weeks of treatment.  

So, last Thursday, was her first off week.  She did not have chemo, but we still had to do the whole sleepy cream, go to the clinic, access her port, take blood and meet with a doctor.  

Kayla did fabulous for all of it.  She even wanted to go in to the chemo suite before we left and say hi to Miss Penny (the nurse who administers the fluids and chemo) and Miss Stephanie (music therapist).  She, of course, wouldn't talk to them, but I think they still felt special that she wanted to go and see them. :)  

While meeting the the doctor (our first time with Dr. Meeker)  we went over Kayla's schedule and talked about her dental surgery, which is next week.  Everything is being worked out between the clinic and the dentist's office and the hospital.  This is very nice for me because all we have to do is show up when we are supposed to.  

One question I asked this time was if there was anything we could do to help Kayla's blood counts to come up faster, for example, certain foods to eat.  The answer was no.  Her bone marrow is taking a beating and it just has to recover on it's own and keep reaching the level it needs to get to to take another beating.  Kayla's counts have been pretty low for a few weeks, so I am glad that she has a couple weeks to recover and will hopefully be doing good to start her next treatment.  

So, the next step is we will go in again on Tuesday to the clinic and check her blood counts again in preparation for the surgery.  Dr. Meeker was pretty confident that she will be fine because her platelets have been at a fairly high level this whole time and that is what is important for surgery.  Then Thursday (June 7th) will be her dental surgery.  We will have to be at the hospital at 6AM (yipee) and the surgery is scheduled for 8AM.  

So much for two weeks off! Ha ha.  Even on her off weeks of chemo, we will still have to go in to check her blood.