Good Day

Ida is keeping on getting better, which is nice to see. This morning we took out the feeding tube from her nose, because we thought it was not placed very well in the stomach. Ida seemed to react to the smallest amount of liquid she was getting and it shouldn't be like that. Indeed, there was some blood on the tube when it came out, nothing too unusual apparently. Ida felt much better immediately and drank some milk by herself. She even ate a little bit today. Beside, she was happy most of the time, she sat by herself and spent some time outside. It's great to have her like that, even if we know it's going to get worse again sometime. But we think the feeding tube was one of the reasons she felt so bad this weekend.
It's not over with this tube though... Even if she started eating, it's not nearly enough and she still gets infusion. In addition, she has to be able to take her medicine orally in order to be at home. It went OK today with some of the medicine, but we didn't even dare to try the cortisone pill, which as I mentioned before - tastes horrible. The doctors argue in favor of a new feeding tube (they actually attempted to insert a new one this morning but Ida just threw up). We hope that we can skip it if she starts eating like she should. Today she got cortisone intravenously. Cortisone is an important part of Ida's treatment at the moment (it suppresses the immune system) but she needs to take it for only a couple more weeks (it will come back later in the treatment regimen).
Ida had the second round of chemotherapy yesterday, getting vincristine and a spinal shot. She is going to get the same treatment next Monday, then a bone marrow sample is taken, too. So next week we'll get the first indication of how the treatment effects Ida, and if some adjustments in term of medications is necessary.
I'm going to get a little deeper into chemotherapy some other time, the term itself gives most people the creeps, even if they don't really knows what it means. But not today, why spoiling the good day we had?