Another Week

It was kind of a typical week, until today at least, which was a little dramatic. I'll get to that later.
Ida gets her medicine in the beginning of the week, when it's vincristine, like last week, she is effected a couple of days later - she lose her appetite and have pain in her bones. Because it's a cytotoxic (or chemo, if you prefer) her blood values may be reduced. That's usually means low hemoglobin level which makes her pale and tired (hemoglobin transfers oxygen to and from the organs). So what do you know - her blood tests this weekend showed hemoglobin level under what is considered acceptable. She was supposed to get a blood transfusion on Sunday, but since we were going in for treatment on Monday anyway we decided to wait with the blood.

On Monday (yesterday) she got Oncaspar, which is a modified enzyme (L-asparaginase), it is administrated intramuscular (into the thigh muscle). It is not a chemotherapeutic drug, as it is not suppose to kill body cells. It has, however, a list of side effects that can fill a couple of posts, so I'll spare you. Ida gets it every two weeks, yesterday was the forth time, I believe. Sure enough she reacts on it, mildly the last time, a little worse yesterday. She gets rash like symptoms - red around the eyes and ears, red dots and the like. It is treated with some anti-allergy drug.
That was yesterday, so we (and the doctors) decided to wait with the blood transfusion one more day.

Before we get to the drama you need to realize that every such treatment is a whole day saga. When Ida gets Oncaspar, which is just a shot in the leg, she has to stay under observation for 4 hours. When She gets blood it takes 3 hours. Before or after it's always blood tests, and usually we have to wait for the results a couple of hours (and when I say we, I mean Camilla...) On the other hand next Monday Ida gets high dose metroxtate (chemo), so she'll stay in the hospital until Thursday...

So today she was getting the long awaited blood transfusion. I was at work and my mobile was breaking down on me. I got a massage from Camilla around noon to call her immediately. When I did she only said to get to the hospital as fast as possible. That was a fun ride as you can imagine. Lucky there are bus lanes in Stockholm... As it turned out Ida had some reaction while getting the blood. She first throw up and later started shaking and got red and puffy all over. I'm sure it was not pretty and very scary for Camilla. Yet when I came there, some half hour later, she was better. She received cortisone and anti-allergy medication. Her fever went up afterward and she had to get something for that.
The doctors could not really say what caused that. It could be a reaction for this specific blood or maybe an infection in the port-a-cath which was pushed in by the blood. They took some tests...
Camilla was upset because she said twice to the nurse that she suspect something was wrong and was practically ignored. It was almost an hour until they stopped the transfusion, even though Ida throw up as soon as it started. She received about 40 ml blood only, so the plan was to try again later.
The kicker to this whole story is that her afternoon blood tests showed a much higher level of hemoglobin (94 g/L up from 78 yesterday, 82 is the minimum before blood is given). So Ida does not need any other transfusion after all...
She was fine this evening when we came home. We had some homemade pizza and Ida was happy to eat the unbaked dough like most healthy children do...

As you might already figured out it's Camilla that goes through most of the hardships, as I'm working full time. She is the one that goes to the hospital 3-4 times a week (now she can actually walk there from our new apartment), she gets puked on way more often than I do... She is the one making friends with other parents in the oncology unit and most important- she has to keep an eye on Ida and everything that goes on with her.
I'm just lucky to have those two brave girls.

It was a long post, and a longer week. Ida is sleeping now, and so should I. Good night.