Learn something new every day

Well....Lisa is not coming home today....and you certainly can't blame it on my efforts. I tried and tried, but the doctors just kept on with protocol. The one doctor even teased me about being a "helicopter parent" you know those types that hover. Really, as if, that would be me...oh...yeah that is me.. but come on now, isn't that what a parent is supposed to do? I mean I'm only looking out for my kid. I told the doc this and he smiled and said most likely she'll be coming home Saturday. Rats!

So, what we learned is that whenever Lisa's temp goes up to 100.5 post chemo, she will be admitted to the hospital. Honestly, this shocked me-- 100.5--- that's nothing to a parent, that's a take some Motrin, keep an eye on her and call the doc in the morning if it gets worse thing. Even after being at Motts for 2 days, I was a bit skeptical and kept asking docs and nurses if we'd done the right thing bringing her in. I mean 100.5...come on now, it's just an itty bitty temp. I thought the staff would pacify me with the "you did the right thing, better to be safe than sorry" routine reserved for hypochondriac hovering moms like me. Pacify....they looked shocked that I actually questioned bringing her in...they all were pretty serious as they repeated..."You have to bring her in, you just never know and we need to treat with antibiotics to make sure that any infection she might encounter is kept to a minimum." They were all pretty serious about the whole thing.

Apparently, chemo kids with 100.5 temp is nothing to mess around with. Because their white blood cells are so low (which are what trigger temps as they rev up to fight infection) kids on chemo might never get a higher temp to signal a problem...100.5 is high for them. So even though Lisa had no other symptoms, protocol says we bring her in and she stays for 48 hours on antibiotics while they watch for infection. She has to have high enough blood counts and be fever free and infection free before they send her home.

She's been fever free since we checked her in on Wed and her labs so far have been good. So...hopefully Lisa will be coming home Sat.

She'll return to Motts on Monday to get her bone scan and bone marrow biopsy done, as well as, they will remove her stint in the hopes of removing the cause of the UTI we can't seem to get rid of.

Next week, she will also be starting stem cell/bone marrow collection, which while I thought this would be easy, have now learned that she has to have high enough blood counts before they can start the collection. Once the counts are high enough, it takes 5 hours at a time to collect, patient has to be bedridden during the procedure and it normally takes 3-5 days to collect enough. This is all a big magical mixture of timing, one that is pretty important, because they can't do the next round of chemo (scheduled for the following week) unless they are able to collect enough stem cells. Oh, and did I mention that they plan to try and do this all outpatient! While that's good because we get to sleep at home every night and have the family all together. It's a bit tougher on Lisa because it exposes her to a lot more germs in the clinic and we have to get up early every day to make the trek to the hospital.

Whew...so keep praying...it's going to be a hectic week.