Labor Day Weekend

Erika's nausea has gotten worse and her pain is still the same. She was admitted Sunday. They are running another blood culture since she's getting the shivers.

Yesterday Visiting With the Pain Doc

Dr. Miller reading Erika's huge file at LDS hospital.

Dr. Miller consulted with Erika today regarding her pain and nausea. He prescribed a couple of new medications and thinks her pain is due to arthritis caused by her treatment. Afterwards she received a breathing treatment.

Outside LDS Hospital breathing in medications to prevent pneumonia. 

So far, the new pain relieving regimen is slightly better, but she is still feeling immense pains. Her nausea is far better controlled with the new medication.

Blood Work Last Night...

Thank goodness for Quadrex Jr. (her walker). Quadrex Sr. was her four wheeled I.V. pole.

There were no abnormalities last night in Erika's blood. If anything, it looked great. Yet, no one can explain the cause of her pain and nausea. In the past it was due to tapering off of steroids and chemo during each cycle, but she's been of steroids for 4 weeks now. On our next visit, maybe doctors will have an idea. I'm assuming they don't have an answer yet for they still need to consult with Boston where Dana-Farber is located for this clinical trial. Since this is a trial, studies can't be tampered with local resolutions, but only with directed methods from the Dana-Farber organization. They need video conferencing to speed things up.

Late Night LDS Visit

Getting help with nausea and pains in the knees. She has been dealing with this since last week and it is not getting better.

No Blood Clot In the Legs

The result of the ultra sound today showed no blood clots according to the technician. Doctors will let us know what the next step is regarding the hip bone infarction and whether Erika will continue with the other three chemo medications after they consult with the Dana-Farber Cancer Center in Boston. Thank you all for your support and prayers.

Yesterday's Consolidation 2 Cycle 5B Visit

Waiting for consultation with a doctor

Yesterday Erika had her 5th cycle of consolidation 2. Due to her increase of neuropathy on her hands, feet, and now ankles, doctors have decided to eliminate the chemo called Vincristine from her treatment. Since her past visits of cycle 3, she had been complaining about hip pains. Dexomethasone, a steroid, cause hip bone weakness. This steroid literally eats away the bone. Last week on Wednesday during her Cycle 5a treatment, she had a X-Ray done to see if there are any signs of hip bone abnormalities. The result show everything was fine structurally. Since last Wednesday her hips felt the same and the pain level appeared to have increased from her hips down to her feet. Yesterday they decided to do an MRI on her hips to check the blood flow. The results showed she had many bone infarctions on her left side of her hip. An infarction means the death (necrosis) of a tissue due to lack of oxygen. Doctors don't know whether it was the chemo PEG-Aspariginase (which is the clinical trial medicine) or high dosage of the steroid Dexamethasone, so they eliminated those two as well from her treatment. That is a total of three chemo medicine being held back. To both Erika and I, this is good news since this means she won't be as drugged up and will not have to feel the side effects of them all. Yet, this puts fear into us that since she will not be getting the complete treatment, the cancer cells may have a chance to come back, especially after knowing about another patient who went through the same clinical trial and she recently relapsed.

Erika's marrow from this February

This is a sample of an infarction.

Today Erika will be going in to get her legs and feet examined for any blood clots since this usually occurs when there are an infarction in the hips. Lets hope that her legs and feet check out fine and that the neuropathy and infarction will be reversible so she can continue on with the treatment.

Strolling down to MRI lab

As I mentioned on the last post, the first blood culture came out positive showing that her blue colored port (she has a red, blue, and white ports). Two days later the other two ports came out positive as well. When all three are infected this usually means that the catheter that follows after the three ports, going up her neck, is infected. Since Erika has been in the hospital she's been receiving antibiotics to fight G+ bacteria as well as antibiotics to prevent any other infections since she was neutropenic. The last blood culture done came back negative. Doctors wanted to wait two more days to confirm that the culture was negative, which it still was. During the stay she received to bags of blood since she was also anemic (thank you all for blood donations.) Her body pains, for the most part, were under control during the stay through pain medications. As long as she continues with this chemo treatment of the clinical trial she will be in this type of pain. This means more pains to come for the next year and a half. Today, she was given the okay to be discharged. She is scheduled for chemo either this Friday or next Monday depending on her blood counts. Thanks everyone for all your continued support.