delayed

Charlotte threw up this morning, and for the first time during her course of treatment I felt like she wasn't 'ready' to go in tomorrow.  Well, my prayers were answered as her blood levels are not high enough for her to get treatment tomorrow.  Her neutrophils (the immune fighting cells) are 'okay' at 0.80, but her platelets (for blood clotting) were only 0.60 and need to be at 0.75 to start.

While I'm very much looking forward to getting this last weekend over with and saying adios to High Dose Methotrexate - I'm thankful for the few extra days for her to recoup a bit more.  Hopefully her neutrophils will climb a bit higher - more neutrophils will help fend off those mouth sores!

While it throws a couple wrenches in our plans, everything should still work out just fine.  We have learned to 'go with the flow'.  My bestie Michelle and her wonderful family are coming to visit next week, and while we may not get as much family visiting, we will get some extra help and get our visits in at the hospital!

We will be back in for bloodwork on Tuesday and are tentatively scheduled to start Wednesday.  Hope everyone has a great long weekend before it's back to school time!

We are free and out of the bubble with no plans - hint hint if anyone wants to invite us to something kid friendly!

Oh - and I just wanted to say thanks to Jen and Dana for nominating me for the Walmart Mom of the Year contest.  I didn't win (some very impressive finalists!), but I really appreciated the kind words and effort that went into the nomination.  If you would like to see it - try this link: mom of the year.

Our other family

We are recovered from our long week.  We really enjoyed our turkey dinner (Stefan BBQ'd it!), and caught up on sleep after the two nights.

Charlotte is doing okay.  She was low energy on Saturday, and then seemed to be doing a lot better Sunday and Monday so we thought we were out of the woods.  But, yesterday she was a bit 'off', not eating and cranky.  This morning there was no improvement although she did drink her pediasure.  I attempted to look in her mouth and saw what I'm guessing is a mouth sore on her cheek.  I decided it was time to try the morphine and gave her a dose this morning and she did seem a happier girl because of it.  It is so hard to gauge what to do when she isn't able to say "mommy, my mouth is sore".  While I'm not too keen on giving her morphine, I don't want her to be in pain and I want her to eat!

Stefan and I got to go to a rugby wedding on Saturday.  It was so much fun.  It was the first time we have left Charlotte without us when she hasn't been asleep. She did really well and I'm very grateful for my mom and step dad for helping out.  We see quite a bit of them so the kids are super comfortable with them.  We got another date last night to the PNE - lucky us.

all dressed up - a foreign concept!

I thought having been to the rugby wedding, it would be a good chance to blog about our other family....

Our SFU Rugby Family
For those of you who don't know, both Stefan and I played SFU rugby, it's how we met.  Now we aren't the only couple to have met through SFU rugby.  In fact, our club is known to be a bit 'incestuous'.  On Saturday we could think of 11 married SFU rugby players.  Yep - beat that Lava Life and Plenty of Fish!

Stefan and I were both pretty dedicated club players, both serving on the executive committee for a few years, and doing more then our fair share of bartending duties at club events.  We are still dedicated to this club even to this day as non-players.

I can't tell you how supportive the club has been to us.  They were a large contingent at our wedding, have provided gifts when both our babies were born, and now have been supportive as we have gone through this 'rough patch'.  With meals, or just texts, cards and calls - they have been lifesavers and many of my closest friends I found through SFU rugby.  We feel pretty lucky to be part of an amazing group of people!

Call it a Clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family.  Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one. 

~Jane Howard 

no rest for the weary....yet

We are home!  Charlotte finally hit her magic number with her 2pm blood test and we left the hospital around 4:30.

I'm always happy to be home.  Especially when Charlotte eats more her first meal at home then she has the past week!  Charlotte's mouth has not gotten worse - which is great.  She was very co-operative with her baking soda rinse before bed and has been good about drinking fluids.

We came home with quite the arsenal of drugs:

• 6MP - her chemo drug, she takes this Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.  It needs to be taken on an empty stomach, so I usually just wake her up before I head to bed to give it to her, usually around 10pm.
• Leucovorin - this is the 'antidote' to the methotrexate, and helps Charlotte to clear it.  This is the first time we have taken it home though.  She will just be on this for 24 hours, she had a dose at 6pm, will get it again at midnight, 6am and noon tomorrow, hence the no rest for the weary.  
• Morphine - for pain.  Might seem a bit overkill but since we can't use tylenol, since it masks fevers, morphine is the go to pain reliever.  Hopefully we won't need to use it.
• Ondansetron - this is for nausea.  Based on the past two rounds, she will probably get it tomorrow and Saturday and then we should be okay.
• Septra - Charlotte has been on this since the beginning and will be on it I believe for a few months past maintenance (so basically the next 2.5 years).  It's an antibiotic which is used to prevent this one type of pneumonia which cancer patients are susceptible to.  She gets this twice a day on Saturday/Sunday/Monday.
• Triple cream - this is for her bum.  It's a concoction made up by one of the oncologists at childrens, and is just a mix of desitin (the strong diaper cream you have seen on the shelves), polysporin and nystatin (I'm not sure what that is!).
• Glutamine - which she gets twice a day to also help with the mouth sores, you can find it at a health food store
• PEG 3350 - which is to help her do her # 2's and is not new to us as she was using it before she was diagnosed.

Tomorrow my Mom will be by to help and we'll all be cooking a turkey.  We will spend the day catching up on the stuff that was ignored the past week like a grocery shop and watering the plants! The leucovorin will be finished up, and with turkey in our belly, we should sleep pretty good tomorrow night - it can't come fast enough!

Big thanks for all the prayers, positive thoughts and nice messages - I believe they helped get us home!