...rubbah' thoughts & creations

Hello Everyone -- I just wanted to share this with you today too - this is the latest update from Tamara:

Well we’ve done the ol’ switcheroo. I’m home with Makena and Kyle is at the hospital with Malia. I thought we were done with this whole tag team game!

Things are looking up. Malia has not had a fever since receiving IV antibiotics in the ER last night and she’s doing very well. No bacteria grew from her blood cultures during the first 24 hour period which is great but they “officially” don’t rule out bacterial infections until it has been left to grow for five days in the lab and is clear. After 48 hours however, they feel much more comfortable if there is still a negative reading and no other spikes in fever have occurred. Either way, she still needs a full 48 hours of antibiotics before they will release her and her ANC needs to be rising (which it already is). Today it was 266. So, needless to say, the earliest that she will be coming home is Thursday.

They figure we’ll try to take advantage of the time that we’re in the hospital so we are trying to get as many of her post therapy scans and tests and such completed while we’re in house. She had her chest x-ray tonight, she’ll have her CT scan tomorrow (which was originally scheduled for Friday) and hopefully we’ll be able to squeeze in her kidney function test and hearing test. I spoke with the CNP, “A” (her nickname – short for Andrea) today and asked how long after the last push of chemo tomorrow that we would have to continue the meds at home. I was hoping she’d only say a week or so but she said that the Bactrim (specifically for a certain type of pneumonia that immune suppressed patients are susceptible to) would have to be continued for probably 3 – 6 months! It’s Malia’s most hated medicine. Ughhh! She said that chemo patients continue to have compromised immune systems for about 6 months after the therapy ends. At least it’s just on the weekends that she takes it...I don’t want to tell her though L.

We’ll keep you posted on any new news.

Hugs!