Day 36 Great news!!

Hi everyone!!!  Boy, i've missed being here with mom!  I am so happy to report some great news that we received today..  They've given mom the green light to come home for a little break!!  yipee! 

Here's the plan...  mom's liver enzymes weren't low enough to get the chemo yesterday or today.. so the doctors are going to let her skip this dose.  On Friday, if her liver enzymes improve, she will get chemo, possibly a reduced dose, then they'll discharge her on saturday.. if the liver enzymes are still high on friday, she'll skip the chemo and just come home!!  She'll get blood work done on tuesday locally and they'll fax the results to Roswell.. as long as her counts continue in the right direction, she'll stay home.  On Thursday (9/9) she'll go back to Roswell for a bone marrow biopsy, and hopefully that will show less than 1% blasts!! Then we can officially say she's in remission... if all goes well, she'll stay home for another week!  she'll have to report back to Buffalo on thursday, September 16 and start course 2 (outpatient, so she'll be at the Hope Lodge!)

so right now I bet some of you are wondering.... why is it ok to skip 2 doses of chemo?  right.. we've thought the same thing.. here's how Sheila explained it:  on the old protocol once a patient was below 5% blasts, they were considered in remission.  on the protocol that mom is on (the one children use) the doctors give more chemo and want the blasts below 1%.. so technically, she already is in remission, but they kept her here to do course 1A just to get her below that 1%. 

Mom is in very good spirits.. still tired, but that's because she's been busy all day!  They come and go non stop from 7am to 9pm and then the nurses still come in at 11, 4 and 6.. then we start all over again.  So, even though she spends a majority of the day in bed, she's never really resting.  She walked a bunch today, talked a lot and made everybody laugh.  she's acting a little more like Rita everyday! 

Dad is coming out tomorrow to prep for mom coming home.. we'll be giving shots, meds and flushing her lines, so we need to learn how to do all of this.. I've already learned to flush lines and tonight I get to give her the shot in the belly!  I thought i'd be grossed out by the thought of this, but it's so great to see mom getting better that I just want to be as much a part of it as I can! 

I'll be leaving once dad gets here (short visit for me, but mom coming home is better than me being out here with her!) so I'll get the house prepared for her arrival.. sanitizing the bathroom and the kitchen, washing blankets, sheets, setting up the air purifiers.. etc.. I'll be busy friday morning!  :)  I can't remember if i've already said.. but we set up a bedroom downstairs so she'll be all set! 

one little story before we say good night.... when arrived earlier, I got into the room and dropped my bags, almost yanking one of my arms off in the process.. and amy, mom and I were having a good time talking, laughing, catching up.... then mom had to go to the bathroom.. so we both helped her to the commode and while we were standing there waiting, I felt something on my arm.. so I thought.. hmm... maybe it's just the sensation of almost having my arm ripped off from heavy bags... no,  no.. much lighter than that would feel... hmmmmmm... maybe one of my stupid hairs is on me, like one that fell out and was just lightly touching my arm (I call those hairs spiders because that's what I imagine spiders would feel like if they were crawling around on my skin) so I brushed off my arm.. and felt something with my hand.. I tried to ignore it.. but just as i suspected... I looked and it was a real spider... yes it was huge.. ask amy  (if you know me at all you'll know that I would rather wrestle an alligator than have a spider crawl on me..seriously) k, well I screamed but tried to make it an inside voice scream so i wouldn't scare mom (still sitting on the commode) or the nurses.. I thought I was going to die.  I brushed it off.. or maybe it jumped, it looked like one of those really mean jumping spiders with fangs.. so it was on the bed now.. I was trying to whack it with a package of "wet ones"... didn't work too well, so I took off my flip flop and beat it to death on moms bed.. almost getting bit on the hand in the process... mom stayed cool and calm and said "just scoot it under the bed pad, i'll lay on it and squish it."  No worries mom.. I already handled it.. and then it took both amy and i with lots of napkins and wet ones to get it into the garbage.. whew.. close call.  that could have been disasterous.  mom was proud of how brave we were.  dad.. you would have been too. 

k, mom's resting, probably trying to trick the nurses into thinking she's sleeping so they won't bother her with her 9pm pills.. she's always trying some sort of trickery around here.. so we'll say goodnight and chat more tomorrow. 

I'm going to try not to think about where the spider came from, how it ended up on me and pray that there isn't a nest in here.. come on.. it could happen...

wish us luck! 

love.