Today Erik and I had to take Raven to the clinic to have her blood drawn for counts. The plan was to see if they were good enough to have her admitted on Monday for more chemo. I thought for sure everything would be okay because she had just had two transfusions on Monday, both blood and platelets. Unfortunately that was not the case. I don’t know why I expect things to go smoothly. By this point, I should expect things to be bumpy, but I can’t help but try to be optimistic when we go to these appointments.
When the doctor came in and told us her platelets had dropped to 14,000 I was instantly upset. He also told us her white count had dropped to 0.8 which meant her ANC was probably low too. More neutropenia…. not what I wanted to hear. He requested her differential to make sure what her ANC was and we were told later it was 348. Not terrible, but not great. He was actually pleased though that it hadn’t crashed all the way. He told us to hold off on the chemo we have been giving her at home and to hold off on her other medications too.
Raven has been on vancomycin for about a week now and yesterday she had labs drawn to see what her levels were. Apparently vancomycin is one of those antibiotics you need to really monitor to make sure the levels are just right. Too little and the medicine is not effective. Too much and it can negatively affect your kidneys. Yesterday Raven’s levels were “toxic”… When I heard the word toxic I kind of freaked out a little bit. I started asking the doctor questions and he reassured me she would be fine as long as we stopped giving her the medicine. This antibiotic runs through your system quickly when stopped. Just to make sure she was okay, he had labs done to check levels to see how the medicine was affecting her kidneys if at all. Just before we left the clinic, the nurse told us her levels were just fine. Nothing to worry about with her kidneys. She is okay. Thank goodness.
Erik had to go to work at 2 today and I knew he’d be really late if he stayed with us for the whole transfusion. Luckily, my dad was off today and came up in the afternoon to sit with us and take us home so Erik wouldn’t be too late. He got there about half way through the transfusion and we talked and laughed a lot while waiting. When the platelets were done, I had to wake Raven for the nurse to take vitals and for us to get going. She wasn’t thrilled. I always feel bad when she wakes up to people messing with her, but unfortunately it’s a necessary evil. Raven was great though and soon we were on our way.
On the way home, I asked my dad if we could go see my Grandma who I haven’t seen in a long time. We called to tell her we were on our way and true to her, she got a little freaked out that she didn’t have anything prepared for us to eat when we got there. She’s so cute and funny about that. I guess it’s the Puerto Rican coming out in her. You must be fed when you come over. There is no saying no. She’ll just keep asking until you eat and even though she didn’t have anything prepared, she made us empanadas just so we’d have something to put in our bellys. She also made me eat rice and beans to make sure the baby was being fed. She’s so cute and tiny and I love her. It was really good to get to see her today. Raven gave her a hug on the way out and blew her kisses and I’m sure that made her day.
When we got home, I got a call from Raven’s doctors. The lab results for the vancomycin were back and her levels had dropped to normal so he wanted us to continue giving it to her. He said he’d send a nurse to draw more labs tomorrow just to make sure she was still at the right levels. The good news is that we can give it to her every 8 hours instead of every 6 which means more sleep!
We’re scheduled to go in on Tuesday to see how her counts are then. Hopefully they will be okay enough to start treatment again. If not, we will more than likely have to go in later next week to re-check counts. In the meantime, we get to hang out at home which is always nice.
Raven's Journey 