Today was our first visit to the Hematology/Oncology Pediatric Doctor's office which everyone refers to as the clinic. This is now where Ambrosia will get all her care when not in the hospital. They checked all her numbers today to make sure she was ready for the next round of chemotherapy. Her numbers are looking good so on Monday we will go in for the surgeons to put a different kind of port in through which she will receive her chemotherapy medicine. This port will be one we can go home with after this round instead of having to take it out like they did the last time. We will stay the night in the hospital Monday and she will start a different set of chemotherapy medicines from last time either late Monday night or on Tuesday. This set of medicine will put us in the hospital for 5 days once it starts as long as there are no complications. So with the surgery we will be in for a total of 6 days.
Her oncologist said today that after this round of chemotherapy, in a couple of weeks after they will do another CT scan to check how her tumors are responding to the medicine. As long as it looks like the medicine is shrinking the tumors they will continue with the first round of medicine they gave and this second round and then alternate between the two. After this next round, we will be able to go home for a couple of weeks again. While we are home we will have visits to the clinic for them to monitor her numbers and progress. After her numbers go back up, we will start chemotherapy again. This process will be repeated until the cancer is gone or shrunk enough of the tumors down for them to be removed surgically. They are hoping the chemotherapy completely rids the tumors from her lungs and shrinks the one on her liver enough to be removed with surgery. If for some reason there are still a couple of tumors left on her lungs they will see if those can also be removed surgically. This is going to be our new normal life for the next several months.
Braeden seems to be adjusting well. He has even asked to go back to the hospital as he really enjoyed playing in their family room. Today he was being an awesome big brother and entertaining his sister while Wes and I tried to get our house back in some kind of order. He really is a great kid and I couldn't be blessed with a better son. I wish I had gotten some video of him entertaining her. Maybe next time.
Something I have not mentioned here and want to let people know about is that we were asked after our diagnosis if we would be willing to let researchers use the leftover tissue from Ambrosia's biopsy to learn more about her kind of tumor. We of course agreed with no hesitation. Anything we can do to help them learn more about her type of cancer so that doctors will better know how to treat it and help future families when they are diagnosed is something we wanted to be a part of.
Her oncologist said today that after this round of chemotherapy, in a couple of weeks after they will do another CT scan to check how her tumors are responding to the medicine. As long as it looks like the medicine is shrinking the tumors they will continue with the first round of medicine they gave and this second round and then alternate between the two. After this next round, we will be able to go home for a couple of weeks again. While we are home we will have visits to the clinic for them to monitor her numbers and progress. After her numbers go back up, we will start chemotherapy again. This process will be repeated until the cancer is gone or shrunk enough of the tumors down for them to be removed surgically. They are hoping the chemotherapy completely rids the tumors from her lungs and shrinks the one on her liver enough to be removed with surgery. If for some reason there are still a couple of tumors left on her lungs they will see if those can also be removed surgically. This is going to be our new normal life for the next several months.
Braeden seems to be adjusting well. He has even asked to go back to the hospital as he really enjoyed playing in their family room. Today he was being an awesome big brother and entertaining his sister while Wes and I tried to get our house back in some kind of order. He really is a great kid and I couldn't be blessed with a better son. I wish I had gotten some video of him entertaining her. Maybe next time.
Something I have not mentioned here and want to let people know about is that we were asked after our diagnosis if we would be willing to let researchers use the leftover tissue from Ambrosia's biopsy to learn more about her kind of tumor. We of course agreed with no hesitation. Anything we can do to help them learn more about her type of cancer so that doctors will better know how to treat it and help future families when they are diagnosed is something we wanted to be a part of.
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