"There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start and so on." - Robert Byrne
Elise has finished the "conditioning" phase of the stem cell transplant process and is ready for the "transplant" part of the process on Friday. Two different courses of chemotherapy drugs and then a couple session of total body irradiation are behind her.
The total body irradiation was done in two parts. The first one had to be precisely targeted to avoid damaging her lungs. Even after all the setup on two different pretreatment sessions, on treatment day this took a bunch of set up and adjustment by the technicians and a verification check by the Radiation Oncologist. It made me feel a little more comfortable that they were being very cautious.
The technicians were great. They were playful with Elise and helped to keep her calm. It's sort of unnerving because they put you in this huge cavernous room with the machine, then tape you to the table so you don't move, and then everyone walks out and leaves you there alone. The technicians let her pick out the music she listened to during the treatment and they made a good game of how she was torturing them with the Frozen soundtrack ("Not Frozen! We have to hear that all the time. Oh you're torturing us!")
Elise walked in and out of both sessions, which was a good sign although she seemed pretty tired after the second one. Her tiredness/crankiness peaked when the nurse told her she needed another IV of the anti-nausea med. She was pretty irritable and I think she wanted a bath to get all the marks off, and the IV prevented that. The anti-nausea drugs must have helped because Elise never felt nausea. That was a huge relief - nausea is the worst.
After a few rounds of crying the nurse made her real happy by telling Elise that there were no more IVs planned for the day. And then she said they'd let Elise sleep through the night (they'd been waking her for vital checks every 4 hours). That made Elise happy and left the day's events on a positive note with her.
The pediatrics PA dropped by in the afternoon and said everything was looking good so far. She said that Elise's conditioning had been "textbook" meaning there had been no unplanned excursion had been necessary (I guess they often are).
So next is a "rest day", meaning no treatment rather than "resting". She'll get an echocardiogram and then be wired up for a 24-hour Holter monitoring of her heart. These tests mirror ones she went through before the chemo. One of the chemo agents (Campath) has been associated with causing heart issues in rare cases so they want to make sure it hasn't done that in Elise.
On Friday Elise will get the infusion of the donor's stem cells. It's a big day but they say its pretty anticlimactic because its basically just another IV. But it's a huge step on the road to a cure!
BTW - all those marks on Elise's skin in the photo are the targeting indexes for the total body irradiation she underwent.
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