Day 15

It's Wednesday, so to the clinic we go! Today was the second time we had to be accessed. Presley did a little better than last time. She really does well with accessing, and the nurses comment on how well she does. It's always harder on mommy! No pain, its just the anticipation of the nurses wearing gloves and everyone wearing masks. They wear masks to have a sterile environment when they access the port.

Cute girl with her port accessed. 

You know your the mommy of a cancer kid when you carry lidocaine and press and seal in your bag. This is what we put on her port site to numb the skin and keep it covered until her port is accessed. 

Presley's "numbers" (its all about the CBC and numbers theses days) were good! She didn't need a blood transfusion or platelets. There are 4 things they look for each week when checking her blood count: the ANC (immune fighting), red blood (hematocrit), white blood count and platelets. These are the cells that are affected with Leukemia. The chemo attacks the good, and the bad, cells. It doesn't know the difference. So over the course of treatment Presley will need many transfusions to help bring those numbers to an acceptable range. When leukemia is detected its usually because of an elevated white blood count (with immature cancer cells), and low RBC and platelets. I was thinking Presley was going to need a blood transfusion so I was prepared to be at clinic for a few hours. I was surprised and happy she didn't.

We got back to the Ronald McDonald House (RMH) and Presley needed to go potty. What we thought was going to be an easy day at clinic turned into a few nights stay at the hospital. Presley had blood in her urine. This is normally not too uncommon when platelets are low, because platelets help the blood clot.  But, her platelets were NOT low :( I made a call to the clinic, and we headed back to see the Doc and figure out what is going on. The worst part was that we had to be accessed again, and this is such a process since its all so new to her still.  The Doctors were concerned about the amount of bleeding, so we were rushed for an ultrasound. This was an intense 30 mins for all involved, especially for a worried mommy and a scared baby. The ultrasound doctor came in to give us the results. Everything looked normal..."Pheww!" We were so glad there was nothing serious going on in her kidneys or bladder.  No fever was showing up, so they did not figure it was infection. However, they don't mess around with this stuff, so they took a few cultures of the blood to see if anything would grow.  What was going to be a short day turned into a long, long day, and of course, we didn't have our over night hospital bags packed. :(