{"id":31,"date":"2008-05-26T01:00:11","date_gmt":"2008-05-26T07:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.phil801.com\/wpblog\/2008\/05\/26\/serenity-is-now-sporting-a-super-cool-port-catheter\/"},"modified":"2008-05-26T01:00:11","modified_gmt":"2008-05-26T07:00:11","slug":"serenity-is-now-sporting-a-super-cool-port-catheter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/2008\/05\/26\/serenity-is-now-sporting-a-super-cool-port-catheter\/","title":{"rendered":"Serenity is now sporting a super cool Port Catheter!"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is Day 3 of my daughter, Serenity, being treated for Leukemia.\u00a0 Day 2 is here.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Today has been a very long, very stressful and very upbeat day!\u00a0<\/p>\n

The day started with surgery prep.\u00a0 Her platelletes were low again, too low to do surgery, so they gave her another bag.\u00a0 Then there were several drugs that she needed to take beforehand.\u00a0 A couple hours later, the surgeons came and got her.\u00a0 They took her down on her bed to the operating room.\u00a0 The anesthesiologist met us and gave her some drugs in her IV to begin sedation.\u00a0 After that we were able to hold her for a bit and kiss her goodbye.\u00a0 Then we handed her to the surgeon and they took her in.<\/p>\n

\"serenitygoingtosurgery.jpg\"<\/p>\n

This whole experience has been a multi-faceted learning experience for me and for Adria.\u00a0 Most of all, we’re learning about cancer and blood.\u00a0 But, we’re also learning a lot about ourselves.\u00a0 We’ve been very blessed with 8 children who, up until now, have been completely healthy.\u00a0 We have never had a child spend the night in the hospital (other than at birth) and we’ve never had a child need surgery or really any kind of risky medical procedure.\u00a0 So this was the first time I’ve ever had to hand my child over to someone so they could go cut her open and do stuff to her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I learned that I don’t really handle it very well.\u00a0\u00a0I was extremely stressed about it, I couldn’t sit in the waiting room for more than one minute before I was feeling like I was going to go crazy.\u00a0 Our good friend Amanda was here with us as well as Adria’s sister, Tara.\u00a0 I told Adria I had to leave.\u00a0 I got up and went and wandered the hospital for a bit, kind of in a daze.\u00a0 Then I thought about that when Adria is stressed she likes to eat certain candy – we didn’t have any of that here.\u00a0 So I finally had a mission, something I could focus on and not imagine the horrific things they were doing to my baby.\u00a0 I got in my truck and headed to the store where I tracked down Adria’s 3 favorite comfort foods (peanut butter M&Ms, sugar babies and Granny B’s Pink cookies if you were wondering).\u00a0 I actually had to go to 3 stores to find everything.\u00a0 I had just gotten the last of it when Tara texted me and said the surgeon had just come in and it would be about 30 minutes more.\u00a0 Perfect.\u00a0 I headed back to the hospital with treats in hand.\u00a0 About 5 minutes after I got back, the Oncologist came out and told us they were done and that everything went excellent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was about 20 minutes later that they came and said she was awake in the Recovery Room and that Adria and I could go in to her.\u00a0 We walked in and she was crying.\u00a0 I picked her up and held her for a while.\u00a0 She was coughing up a lot of flem and they told us that they had had to intubate her and put her on the breather twice due to her lungs still having a bit of pneumonia in them.\u00a0 They gave me a suction tube and had me suction her out when she coughed stuff up.\u00a0 It was very good to be back with her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"serenityinrecovery.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Once things were stable, we headed back to her room.\u00a0 The nurse immediately gave her a once over and checked everything out on her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"serenitypostop.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Then she slept for a while.\u00a0 She had gotten her first Chemo treatment which meant that there were now drugs that she had to take orally that weren’t an option.\u00a0 The Nurse schooled us on how to affirmitively work with Cancer Kids on taking their meds.\u00a0 They have to learn that there isn’t an option and it doesn’t matter if they don’t like it – they just HAVE to take it.\u00a0 Cancer Kids definately have to have a different lifestyle than the rest of us are used to.\u00a0 After sleeping for a few hours, she woke up again and was in a pretty good mood.<\/p>\n

\"serenityhappyaftersurgery.jpg\"<\/p>\n

That lasted for about 15 minutes and then she was worn out again.\u00a0 But it was really fun to have some of the old super happy, super excited about life her back again!\u00a0 She and I laid down on the bed and slept for about 5 hours – we were both exhausted.\u00a0 After that catnap, she woke up and her appetite was back!\u00a0 She hadn’t eaten solid food for about 4 days and she started asking for everything!<\/p>\n

\"serenitysfoodspread.jpg\"<\/p>\n

We gave her a sponge bath and got her set up sitting on Adria’s lap to have a great meal of cherios, yogurt, gatorade, bananas and ice cream.\u00a0 She was one happy kid while she chowed down and watched a movie!\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"serenityeating.jpg\"<\/p>\n

After about an hour of eating, she was kind of tired.\u00a0 Then my brother came over with Serenity’s one year old cousin and they played for a while on the bed.\u00a0 She wasn’t too interactive though as she was ready for bed.\u00a0 After they left, she laid down with Adria and has been sleeping for several hours.<\/p>\n

Now it’s really late and it has taken me all day to get this post put together.\u00a0 There continues to be lots of support and love pouring in and I want to thank everyone for that again.\u00a0 I’m way behind on personal responses – it might be a while before I get through them all, but I want everyone who has sent personal notes and donations to know that we are extremely grateful and very moved by the showing of love that we’ve received.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Several people have contacted us asking if there is a ’support Serenity’ site or account being created.\u00a0 There is.\u00a0 Some other people are heading it up and I’m told it should be ready by Tuesday.\u00a0 I don’t know a lot of the details on it, but for those asking, we’ll have that soon.\u00a0 I’m especially moved by the offers of donations.\u00a0 It was something that never occurred to me would happen, but several people have pointed out that this is going to cost a ton of money – another thing I’m not even thinking about.\u00a0 It’s interesting how you can stress about money and then when something like this happens that is probably going to cost more than our house – money isn’t what you stress or think about – you just do it.\u00a0 So to those thinking about it for us – thank you!\u00a0 I’m sure that once we get home and back to the real world that will become a much higher priority for us.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We have to be here in the hospital for 7 days starting today.\u00a0 They have to closely monitor her while they get her started on treatment and refine the protocol they are going to use.\u00a0 After that it will be weekly, then monthly visits for more than two years.\u00a0 We’re honestly looking forward to all those treatments – it means we’ll have our little girl with us that long and hopefully get cured and she can go on to live a full life.<\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is Day 3 of my daughter, Serenity, being treated for Leukemia.\u00a0 Day 2 is here.\u00a0
\nToday has been a very long, very stressful and very upbeat day!\u00a0
\nThe day started with surgery prep.\u00a0 Her platelletes were low again, too low to do surgery, so they gave her another bag.\u00a0 Then there were several drugs that she […]<\/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\/31"}],"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=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}