Sean took Charly up for her chemo visit today. Apparently, the doctor commented on Charly's ability to retain her hair. Her new growth has been hanging on, and I have been privately wondering when it will decide to fall out. Charly's blood tests show that her immunity levels have decreased from last week, but the doctors warned us this would be the case. Apparently, her levels weren't as low as they anticipated, and they decided they wouldn't schedule a home health nurse to come visit next week to draw blood and check her levels Christmas week. Charly's next chemo visit is January 3rd. She starts a new phase. They will give her a lumbar puncture and a round of chemo through her port. Then they will leave her port accessed and send her home. That means the tube that they use to administer the chemo will remain in her port, covered by Tegaderm - a clear, Saran Wrap-like material. Home health will come to our house the next 3 days, and will administer chemo through her port at home. I'm not looking forward to Charlotte's reaction to going home with her port accessed. She probably will not be very happy. If I read the chart correctly, they do that twice in this next phase.
Charlotte was starving when she got home. She's back on steroids this week, and the nurses told Sean that we will need to feed her high calorie meals. I prepared a roast for the crockpot the night before and had it ready for Sean to put it in the crockpot in the morning (it gets done too early if I turn it on when I leave for work). Charly wouldn't wait for the Yorkshire puddings in the oven, so I dished carrots, potatoes and roast beef up for her to start eating without us. She finished up her carrots and potatoes, handed me her plate and asked for more. She also told me to put gravy on her roast. I put the gravy on her roast, gave her more veggies, and she started crying. Apparently "roast" was her potatoes, NOT the meat.
She cried for 10 minutes. Even though I quickly made her an entirely new plate of food, prepared like she wanted it, she kept crying. She said she didn't know why she was crying. I do! Steroids! She calmed down enough to demand I give back the potatoes and carrots that were on her old plate. A disturbing physical reaction that Charlotte has developed from the first week of chemo is that she turns bright blotchy red when she's upset. It looks like she is having an allergic reaction and is breaking out in hives. Along with being disturbing, it's a little fascinating. If any of you happen to witness this phenomena, I would say you shouldn't worry, it goes away when she stops being anxious. After she calmed down, she ate her dinner and climbed in my lap. She was a little tired so she sat in our bed with Sean, reading some books while Naomi and I cleared up dinner. An hour later, she demanded Triscuits. It looks like Charlotte will be doing pretty good for Christmas, maybe just a little tired and a lot hungry.
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