Isabella has felt much better today and has actually eaten and drank normally. When Isabella woke up today, she gobbled up a hash brown, then for lunch, she requested a pizza. We’re glad they decided to discontinue the one medication that we thought was causing her nausea. Best of all, she has been able to smile all day!
In the previous rounds of chemo, Isabella has done pretty well with the side effects. She’s had a bit of nausea and general lack of appetite, but hasn’t really had any vomiting. Those symptoms would subside shortly after we left the hospital. With the new batch of drugs being used in this round, Isabella unfortunately has been throwing up quite a bit. They changed things around a little bit yesterday, which seems to have had a positive effect so far as her vomiting has subsided, although she still says she feels dizzy when she stands up.
It was quite a stark contrast to compare Isabella from when we got admitted to the hospital on Monday and after she got her chemo. When we first got to the hospital, Isabella was in such a good mood, she was literally skipping around the hallways and everyone mentioned how great she looked. Then, less than half an hour after she got her chemo dose, she started throwing up. If I haven’t said it before, this chemo stuff, which is basically poison, is some nasty stuff.
But the good news is that we are now halfway through the treatments and we are scheduled to go home on Friday. I’m hoping the rest of the week goes by uneventfully and we can enjoy some nice weather this weekend.
So it’s been a couple weeks since we had an update. I just realized that because tomorrow, we’re going back into the City to start another round of chemo. The last couple of weeks haven’t been all boring as we did spend a week in Florida to get away from the horrendous weather here in the Northeast. I hope to get some pictures up shortly, but as you can imagine, I have many pictures to go through.
Anyway, as I said, Isabella starts another round of chemo tomorrow. Her blood counts actually took longer than expected to recover, so she had an extra week to spend in school. The doctors are putting together a different group of drugs in this round to see if we could get a better response. As I mentioned in a previous post, tumor cells have a tendency to build resistance to chemo so it’s good to mix things up once in a while.
The good news (if there could be good news) is that this round is only expected to last 4 days, a day shorter than the previous cycles, so we should be home on Friday. But to whet your appetite for our vacation pics, here is a teaser!
