Day -7: One chemo down

Nadia has been handling this first round of chemo pretty well. It has been exhausting though. The drug takes about 8 hours to administer, and this whole time we are locked up in our room. And they take vitals every 30 mins. This is a bit of a taste of what we will experience in the isolation rooms I guess.

Nadia has gotten much better at getting her vitals taken, so that really has been helping everyone involved. Unfortunately, she has been skipping her naps. The past 2 nights daddy has been staying at the hospital with Nadia and she pushed her bedtime back from 7 to 9:30 and then 10pm. Tonight she went to bed at 8:30 pm for mommy. Lucky! 😉 (The night is not over yet …)

The Hulk has been coming to visit every so often, but nothing like the first day, so little victory for us. Nadia is able to get out to the play room before her chemo drugs start at 10 am, so i think that has helped, and she seems to have been ok with staying in the room after. Another little victory and the sun was shinning yesterday morning so we are feeling very good about life right now!

Now that it is Monday, we had lots of ‘visitors’ in the room. Dietician, docs on rounds, and even some music therapy. Nadia LOVED it! (video below).

So we have finished the Campath (Alemtuzumab), and had the first dose of Fludarabine. The Campath takes 8 hours. The Fluradabine takes only 30 mins. The next two days are Fluradabine only, so we should be able to spend lots of time in the play room. For Vancouver friends, if you are well (we can’t risk getting Nadia or any of her compatriots sick!!), the next two days might be a good time to drop in. We start another drug after this and we don’t know what to expect with that one (besides her hair likely falling out).

The first day Nadia had a allergic skin reaction to the Campath near the end of the injection, and they seemed to be able to fix it with Benedryl. She seemed to tolerate the fludarabine OK today.

We are going to kick this thing’s ass!

Nadia loved music therapy today