Last Day of Chemo!

Today, Isabella got her last dose of chemotherapy, a three hour drip of thiotepa. As I wrote previously, although she is doing much better than in previous cycles, she has started to feel the effects of the chemo. She has vomited a couple times over the last couple days and her appetite has been reduced to almost nothing. Also, she is not yet neutropenic (low white cells count) and her other blood counts are still ok, but they continue to drop and we expect them to bottom out within the next few days.

Today, she also started to feel more tired and did not want to do much. For the last couple of days, she would have the energy to walk around and take part in some of the playroom activities. But today, she didn't feel like walking and took several naps.

So the plan for the rest of the week is to have a two day rest on Thursday and Friday. On Saturday, she is scheduled to receive her stem cells that we collected over the last couple cycles. This will help her blood counts recover. We will also be moved to an "isolation room" within the next couple of days in anticipation of her white counts hitting zero. An isolation room is simply a regular room that the nurses completely sterilize before we move into it. In addition, all visitors to the room (including the nurses, Julianne, and myself) must wear gloves, masks, and gowns. It should take about 10-14 days for her counts to start to recover, then, a few more days when we will be able to go home.

So while we're excited to be done with the chemotherapy, we will be on edge for the next couple weeks as Isabella will be extremely susceptible to infection and her body's immune system will not be able to fight any infections. Since she won't be able to leave the room, we will also need to find a way to entertain ourselves in the room.