3 down, 6 to go

So it's been slightly over a week since we finished the 3rd chemo cycle. Usually the time in the hospital is uneventful, boring mostly, and Soph does well. No one gets good sleep, so we are all tired for a few days afterwards, but the actual administration of chemo is not a big deal.

It's the days/weeks following that are unpredictable. Again, with every 3rd cycle, Soph gets a different drug, Cytoxin, which is different than what she gets in cycles 1-2, 4-5, 7-8. So far, it's had more of an effect with nausea. She's been consistently vomiting every night or morning, even with the Zofran we've tried to give her. As a result, she has been eating about half a bite of food per day. Prior to this 3rd cycle, her appetite was picking up, and she was eating something like 5-6 bites of food. Isn't it sad that we measure her food intake by bites? Another undesirable result of this terrible cancer.

Thankfully, the TPN still gives her the 1000 calories/day overnight, but it'd sure be nice to have her eat a bit more.

Otherwise, no fevers yet, and we are entering the zone where her blood counts drop, so we are on alert for that.

Summer is here, and we are trying to balance a few programs/classes in between chemo cycles and on weeks that we anticipate that she won't be neutropenic (low blood counts). We want to limit some of the physical activities, since we know she may not be able to keep up and gets mad, so there's a few art classes teed up, along with some rehab sessions at Marianjoy.

Thanks for your continued prayers. Sophie is usually in good spirits, and we are hopeful for the best outcomes. With baby on the way, life will get busy and complicated, but we are holding on to the promise that God doesn't give us more than what we can handle.

P.S. We started a facebook page that anyone/everyone can visit and like to keep up with updates and pics (that will hopefully be more frequent than these posts).

http://www.facebook.com/feistyfightersophie