![\"serenitybear.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.phil801.com\/wpblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/serenitybear.jpg\")
<\/p>\nGoals for today were:<\/p>\n
– No puking… check<\/p>\n
– Take oral meds better….check<\/p>\n
– Eat some food….check<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Other than some cancer specific issues, there was a lot of happiness in our hospital room today.\u00a0 The “Child Life” group brought teddy bears to everyone on the floor.\u00a0 The above picture is of Serenity snuggling with hers.<\/p>\n
This afternoon we played a game with the surgical gloves.\u00a0 I would blow the glove up and keep it on my mouth, she would grab a finger on it and pull it lose so it would shoot across the room.\u00a0 She actually laughed, several times!\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"serenityglove.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.phil801.com\/wpblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/serenityglove.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
But fun never lasts for very long around here and this time it was being interrupted by the nurse bringing in more meds for her to take.\u00a0 She spent a lot of time playing with all her toys and was just happy doing that.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"serenitylaughing.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.phil801.com\/wpblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/serenitylaughing.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Several times today it was easy to forget that we’re here fighting cancer, but that is short lived because there are just too many reminders.\u00a0 The doctor started her on a new anti-nausea drug, Zofran, today and it made a huge difference!\u00a0 She didn’t puke a single time today, even with getting her chemo treatments today.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So, what are the reminders that she has Leukemia? Well, besides the really obvious, if you’ve noticed, in every picture I’ve posted of her she is laying down.\u00a0 There is a reason for that, Leukemia ravages your body and can cause huge amounts of pain in your bones.\u00a0 For Serenity, that is all focussing in her legs.\u00a0 She can’t stand up, when she does she cries in pain. She hasn’t stood up for almost a week now.\u00a0 Not only that, but she can’t leave her room – at all.\u00a0 She is allowed to leave if her ANCs, which is a measure of white blood cells, are above 500.\u00a0 She can’t leave the cancer ward until they are above 1,000.\u00a0 For a healthy person, that cound is 7,500 – 10,000.\u00a0 Serenity’s ANC count is 100 which means her immune system is pretty much non-existent.\u00a0 Not only that but it has been at 100 for the last 3 days.\u00a0 It’s supposed to increase by at least 1o0\/day.\u00a0 Going home means leaving the Cancer ward which means she has to be at 1,000 in order to go home.\u00a0 We’re concerned that that isn’t happening.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She also had to get an intra-muscular chemo treatment today.\u00a0 They came in and shot it in her thigh muscle.\u00a0 This particular med burns badly once it is in.\u00a0 Serenity cried in a way that we have never heard her cry.\u00a0 It was awful.\u00a0 Then there are the oral meds that she has to take pretty much all day.\u00a0 I think she is on about 20 different drugs, more than half of which is taken orally.\u00a0 She HATES taking oral meds, fights it like crazy.\u00a0 Yesterday when I was giving her one, she was screaming at me (like every time), she looked at the syringe, looked at me, looked back at the syringe, reached up and pulled out the plunger from the syringe!\u00a0 It’s a fight every time we have to administer oral meds and it usually ends up with about a fourth of the drugs being on her shirt, on my shirt and on my face.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She has also made some interesting adaptations.\u00a0 She now pretty much seems to think of her IV line as part of her.\u00a0 Whenever she moves, she keeps an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t get pulled tight.\u00a0 When the nurse comes in to take her vitals and gets the blood pressure cuff down, she lifts her arm so they can wrap it on.\u00a0 She also points with the finger that she wants the oxygen sensor connected to.\u00a0 She is quickly becoming a child who is adapted to being a hospital kid.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That’s pretty much all for today.\u00a0 It was mostly non-eventful, thus a rather short post.\u00a0 Hopefully tomorrow is a relatively easy day as well and another short blog post.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Goals for today were:
\n– No puking… check
\n– Take oral meds better….check
\n– Eat some food….check<\/p>\n
\nOther than some cancer specific issues, there was a lot of happiness in our hospital room today.\u00a0 The “Child Life” group brought teddy bears to everyone on the floor.\u00a0 The above picture is of Serenity snuggling with hers.
\nThis afternoon we played a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}