Miss Malia ~ An Update from this past week

Good Morning!

Malia's mom, Tamara, posted a note tonight so I just wanted to share it with you here too!!

Hi everyone,I just wanted to post a little update about Malia’s clinic visit on Monday. All is well, her ANC is back up above 500 so no more shots…HOORAY! At least until we get out of the hospital next week that is. But that should be the last round of them since next week is the beginning of her fourth and final round of chemotherapy. J Last Friday I must have been having a clairvoyant moment as she did need a transfusion on Monday. Her hemoglobin was low so she got some fresh blood and it put a little pep in her step, helped her appetite, and brought back some color to her beautiful face. In fact she’s back up to 39lbs. Remember: she had started out at just over 40lbs. and went down to 32lbs. the first week out of the hospital. So this is really good! Luckily Grandma Hight had come over to watch Makena at home because what we thought would be a standard 2 ½ hour trip to clinic ended up being about 6 hours.

At clinic they gave her a “Gabe’s Chemo Duck” www.gabesmyheart.com. A little stuffed animal duck that has a port in its chest (just like Malia). They also gave her all kinds of stuff to help take care of “Chemo” like a port access needle (tubey) with the needle cut off, band aids, tape, gauze, cleaning tool, etc. so that she can access Chemo’s port and administer medicines just like they do to her port in clinic and the hospital. I’ve become her nursing assistant and have had to help her give Chemo’s medicine a minimum of 15 times each day J (we call her Doctor Malia). I keep asking her why Chemo needs so much medicine (hoping that she’s not going to say that she’s been bad or something horrible like that). She just says because “Chemo needs it to get better”. At one point she did say that Chemo has lost weight so she needed medicines but I’m trying to make her understand that the medicine is not needed because of weight loss but to help keep Chemo from getting sick again.She’s got another clinic visit this Friday and then she’ll be admitted (as long as her counts are good) on Tuesday the 30th for her last inpatient chemo. We’ll still have to go into clinic for two more weeks for chemo and exams and then that will hopefully be it (fingers are crossed). We already have an appointment for her “post chemo” CT scan on 10/24 and then if all goes well then hopefully we’ll just have to go in for a one night stay for surgery to remove the port. I’d like that to be after Halloween but before Thanksgiving.

We’ll keep you posted.Love to you all!

Thanks again to all of you who look in on my blog and continue to keep Miss Malia in your prayers and remember her with your cards!

Huggs~