Days 141 - 147

Celebrating Miss. Brave Kennedy

At Loyola celebrating the LAST IN-PATIENT chemo treatment!  Today marks admit 6 of 6 and almost the beginning of maintenance.  Maintenance will require 2 years of oral weekly/daily chemo and in-clinic administration of spinal chemo infusions and vincristine on specific days but no more scheduled hospital stays.

We almost didn’t make it for our admit today as Kennedy’s counts were only 540.  Had they been under 500, we would have been put on hold and sent home until next week.  Counts this low make her susceptible to just about anything so they have to be careful to not overstress her poor little cells.  I was able to make it to the clinic and join dadfor her intrathecal (spinal infusion) today at clinic, the first one I’ve been to in awhile.  It’s sickening to see your 5 year old drugged.  When she was under for the few minutes, she said “Mommy” and “Owwwww”.  It was heart breaking.  After she started coming to, she said her standard….”four eyes, Mommy, Pappi (papa - dad), I love you” – she was drugged, silly and adorable which eased the pit in my stomach.  She has an amazing attitude.  I guess kids say all sorts of things when coming off of the ketamine.  We were told that one little boy told Dr. Manera he was an alien and to get back in his ship and go home. 

Dancing at the Wedding

Kennedy was busy as usual over the past week.  We went to cousin Chad’s wedding on Saturday and took a trip down the river via boat on Sunday.  On Monday, K hung out with her best friend Sofia at the park.  Tuesday she had piano lessons and yesterday she just hung around the house which was probably a good thing since her counts were so low.  She played with Jackie at night for a few hours.

Tonight we are celebrating Kennedy’s being BRAVE.  Phyllis from the Disney Store gave Kennedy a BRAVE gown.  She was so excited when I brought it to the hospital that she wanted to wear it right away and wore it for a good part of the night as we played and danced around the room.  She is getting shakier as the methotrexate takes affect so we now we are hanging out “plugged-in”, K with the ipad and me with the blog.

Cheers to her last inpatient stay for chemo and praying that we do not have to come back for any reason.