Duffy’s blog

My mom and stepdad Ron arrived last night after making the 11 hour drive back from their home in Florida as planned. I am so thankful they were able to come back so quickly. They had planned to help me with Kaylee’s transition to home from her last hospital visit…clearly things changed that plan today!

Today did not start out that eventful, as Kaylee made it clear that she didn’t feel so great from Chemo yesterday. She woke up crying but nothing I offered her for breakfast seemed to be what she wanted. She let Grandma give her yogurt, but didn’t chug her milk like usual and just generally wanted to be cuddled. She seemed to be extremely lethargic to the point that my mom made a comment to call the clinic about her tiredness. (she could barely keep her eyes open, she was so tired.) I reminded her that unless I had a question, a huge concern, or K had a fever that I wasn’t going to call the Clinic. We were told yesterday that the chemo would make her feel run over & tired. Around 11:00, K fell asleep by me on my bed while I was chatting with my mom. She took a short nap and when she woke up, I noticed she felt quite hot. We took her temp and realized she had a fever, so I called the clinic trying not to stress. The head nurse of the clinic told us to pack a few things up and head to the E.R. The nurse said she would let the E.R staff know we were coming so we wouldn’t have to have Kaylee be in the waiting room (which is what they do for most Oncology patients.) Once we hung up, is when I let myself be a little upset and cried for about 0.3 seconds before I realized I needed to suck it up & get ready to leave. I tried to be as calm as possible throwing in a few extra things in our “go-bag” while my mom did most of the stressing (sorry mom, I love you! ;> ) Ron drove us to the hospital while I fed Kaylee some lunch in the backseat.

Once we got to a Triage room in the E.R they took K’s temp (which was still a fever) and accessed her port to do a blood draw. Well, before they accessed her port, due to her low white blood cell count yesterday, I had to put on a mask since she was in my lap, and they had to put a mask on her…this did NOT go over well with her and the nurses asked me to hold her arms down so she would stop trying to pull her mask off! (I hated this b/c she was in hysterics at this point-poor baby.) She kept repeating “All done? All done? And then finally “All Done!” when the nurses were done with accessing her port. We waited until her blood counts came back~ her white blood cell count is even lower than yesterday (this is what Chemo does) Her platelet count was also low but not low enough to need another transfusion, and the rest were stable. One of the labs of blood work (blood culture) takes up to 48 hours to determine if her fever was caused by a virus, infection or (what we are praying for; just a reaction to the chemo.) They started K on an IV of fluids and an IV of Antibiotics. After the Antibiotics were in her system, they checked her temp again, to only find out her fever had gone up, (which is when I asked our Facebook prayer warriors to please pray.) They gave her Children’s Tylenol, and after almost an hour her fever finally broke and her temperature returned to normal.

We were then wheeled back to the Aflac Cancer Center to our new room. At this point Kaylee seemed much better, more alert and giggling at Grandpa being silly and Chris’s mom arrived to see how Kaylee was doing. After we all ate dinner and all the parents left to go home, we got K in her p.j’s & she fell asleep before we even attempted story time. She has been on and off sleeping ever since (our new room is right at the entrance so every time the door slams or people are talking loudly coming in, she’ll wake up for a second.) Her temperature has remained normal. (Just another example of how prayer is working!)J

We just talked to the nurse when she came in to check K’s vitals, and she informed us the Chief of Oncology will most likely ask us to stay until K’s induction phase is over since she spiked a fever today. (We will do whatever is in the best interest of Kaylee obviously, but I am hoping she is wrong!) For those that don’t know, when a child cancer patient gets a fever during the Induction Phase (first phase of chemo) & they have a low ANC count (the type of white blood cells that fight off any sickness) it can become critical, fast. K had an ANC count of 100 yesterday which is considered very low. Today, it was 3! Yes, 3!! She literally has nothing in her body to help her fight off any infection or sickness, so we have to stay here at the hospital at the very least until she stays fever free for 48 hours.

We thank you all for praying for our little girl and she obviously still needs them! We are praying for her fever to be just a reaction to chemo and not an infection. We are praying that she continues to improve, and feels better! We of course are still praying that God will heal her! We are praising God that we caught the fever right when it started, that her temperature is normal now and that my parents were at home with me when she needed to go to the hospital! Despite this roadblock, I still feel like Kaylee will continue to amaze us and that she can fight and win this cancer battle! God’s got this!

Jeremiah 29:11~ “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”

#PRAY4K