"Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans. It is lovely to be silly at the right moment." - Horace
This was the first of two planned days of chemotherapy with a drug called busulfan. Busulfan suppresses the activity of the bone marrow which produces your blood cells.
They started early by premedicating Elise with Zofran, Dexamethazone and Keppra.
Zofran reduces nausea. Dexamethazone reduces inflammation. And Keppra helps prevent seizures associated with higher doses of busulfan.
After the premeds, they started the busulfan IV. There was really nothing to it. Nothing to report.
Following the busulfan infusion they draw blood every 15 minutes and then 30 minutes then hourly for a while. They are measuring the amount in her bloodstream so that they can tell how fast her body metabolizes it. Apparently kids aren't the same as adults and the exact dosage is really important. If she metabolizes it too fast they may need to do an additional day of infusion to make sure her bone marrow function is suppressed enough for the donor's cells to engraft.
If you read my blog yesterday you may remember that there is another drug that prevents seizures that can cause behavioral issues, but Elise got Keppra that isn't supposed to have this side effect. Well I don't know what did it, but Elise was one goofy girl almost all day. Not way out of control goofy, but on the higher end of her normal goofy spectrum. She was much higher energy than she's been recently. It was nice to see, but a little curious.
Becky was able to join us in the hospital today, and I think that may have contributed to Elise's giddiness. Having someone else around had to be refreshing. I know it was for me.
In between blood draws and various visits by the medical team, Elise went to her daily tutor session and recreation therapy. She was really excited because they had guinea pigs and she's been watching all manor of pet videos on Youtube so something cute and furry was a nice distraction.
Tomorrow is more of the same without all the blood draws since they'll already have measured her ability to metabolize the busulfan. Hopefully it will go smoothly.
Also, tomorrow Becky is planning to spend the night at the hospital so I can sleep at the apartment. That will give Elise someone else's snoring to complain about...
It's late and they just gave Elise another IV dose of Keppra and then Zofran. The goofyness is definitely from the Keppra. She turned into Chatty Cathy almost as soon as they plugged the IV in and she seemed to really perk up. I hope she can get to sleep!
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