Goodbye Phase 4!!

We are finished with her 8 rounds of chemo in 11 days! Overall, she handled it pretty well. She throw up a few times and had head ache, but so much better then the previous weeks on steroids. We once again feel like we have our little girl back. She was pumped to be able to go out and stay in the trailer over the deer hunt. We had chemo everyday over the weekend so we had to make trips back to town. I now can add nurse to my resume as I administered chemo to her one day and I couldn't have done it without my faithful assistant (Johnny, of course) helping me.  He had me add that, but really it's the truth he does a great job giving Avery her medicine too and qualifies as my nurse in training-soon he may be able to add that to his resume! (ha-ha)

We were glad the weather was warm so she was able to go outside and play. Mostly she  prefers to be inside watching movies or doing a craft project.  One of the nurses at oncology called to give me her counts from her blood draw. The nurse wondered if she had been more tired lately because her Hematocrit (HCT)  was low and was border line a blood transfusion at 24.2. Normal is 34 to 40. This is made up of red blood cells which carry oxygen to all the organs and tissues of the body. I was surprised because for her "new normal" she seemed like she was moving around more and had more energy then the last few weeks when on steroids. We finished her last chemo through her port on Monday, Oct 24th and the oral pill on Friday. If she seems more tired then usual then the nurse wants me to call. If not Home Health will come check her counts again on Friday. One of the side effects of this chemo is dropped counts 1 to 2 week later. Her other counts were:

WBC: 1.6,(low) HCT: 24.2 (low) ANC: 1500 (low side of normal, but high for us)PLTS: 195 (normal)

I look happy, but really injected your own daughter with chemo is something I never planned on (no one does)ever doing. You have to put on this blue suit, purple glove all to protect yourself from the chemo. There's an emergency spill kit and a yellow container everything goes into after. Then you have to call someone to transport this special chemo container.