So, it looks like we don't have so much skin on our teeth after all; Gianni was re-admitted to PEC on Thursday night and won't get to come home until early this week. This time we don't even have a fever! One of the chemo side effects is an irritation of the bladder (very rare mind you) and well, she's got it. Gianni has become the poster child for rare side effects, we just hope that if the rest of her cells are this sensitive that the cancer cells are far worse off. She had been complaining of pain while peeing, and we had seen some blood in her diaper - the docs have been treating this as an urinary tract infection. When no white blood cells appeared in her sample, some just chalked it up to being neutrapenic; she had no white blood cells period, let alone ones that could be spared for an infection!
Once her counts came back up (and still nothing grew) we were able to rule out a bacterial infection, test are still being run to determine if it could be viral but the treatment regime is similar either way so we are moving ahead with the assumption that something is hurting her and we are fixing it. She has been super hydrated for the last 72 hours, this keeps things moving and all her diapers have been clear since Friday morning; no more pain.
It's Sunday today, and we've started hydrating her through her NG tube now - not the IV, this is good because it means we may get to go home soon. She was given an ultrasound today to look at her kidneys, liver, spleen, and bladder - hopefully these pics will provide enough information to let the docs know what's going on. She was a barrel of laughs at the ultrasound (being facetious)
- considering all the horrible things she's had to do, this one seems to be pretty minor. They just glob some jelly on the belly and roll a pen-like wand around. She screamed bloody murder and wiggled the entire time! I had to laugh. I sure hope they got the pics they wanted.
Seems that she is neutrapenic again too, not surprising this late in the protocol (read: only TWO MORE TO GO!!!!). We are doing okay, and Bruno has been able to stick it out with us so far, so all is good.
Thank you for all your support, good wishes, and prayers - we feel it!
