Our first visit with CHUC

Catchy title, don't you think? Let me explain. At first glance, sounds like we visited someone, doesn't it?? Well, CHUC is actually an acronym. It stands for Children's Hospital Urgent Care, and yes, we had our first visit with Kateli there tonight.

Before I get into anything else, let me update on Wednesday's appt. It has been crazy, but fun at home this week, so I had not had much time to be on the computer. Our appt on Wednesday went very well. As planned, Kateli had a bone marrow aspiration; and she had two chemo drugs administered--one intravenous, and one intrathecal. Intrathecal means it was injected into her spinal fluid, so Kateli did have a spinal tap done as well. The procedure was fast, and Kateli woke quickly after she was taken off the "sleepy" medication. Dan and I walked back into the procedure room only to hear our little girl chatting away with the doctor and the nurse, as the doctor finished up and put band-aids at her poke sites. She's got three band-aids on her back and she refuses to let anyone touch them, or look at them for that matter. The doctor did have some information back on the genetic tests. I have to admit that I don't have ALL the details, as I was holding Kateli and she was not too happy while the doctor talked to us. I'll try to have Dan update with more details on the upcoming procedure. Basically, they have placed us into the "average" risk standard treatment. It's not absolutely certain if she will remain in this treatment, as there is the possibility that she could be in the "low" risk treatment, and I don't know that I fully understood what would determine that (again, I had a child screaming in my ear, while the dr talked). Consolidation/post induction, which is the second phase of the treatment starts next week. We did get a road map of the treatment schedule, but have not sat down to draw this out--Dan has been out of town all week, except for Wed morning. I'll try to post more when I have more information.

Going back to our visit to CHUC...As I mentioned in the previous post, Kateli went off the steroids on Tuesday morning and it has been so great. What a difference I've noted in our little girl. It has been a blessing to see our little girl gain back her energy and her strength back. Yesterday was so much fun for us, as Kateli spent most of the day just giggling and being funny and silly. Abuela Marlene is visiting and she has been so great with Kateli. Kateli is eating less. She's sleeping better and more. She wakes up in the morning giving me kisses and hugs--she's been sleeping in bed with me :) She is playing with her toys. She's walking around the house and not asking to be held all the time. Her eyes are beginning to show that spark again. We've been to the park the last two days and she's had fun walking around, and playing on the swings. This evening though, after getting back from the park she felt a little warm. We thought it might be because we had just come in from the sun, so we waited to take her temp. After dinner, while changing her diaper, she felt warm to me again so I took her temp. She measured 101.7!! Yep, you guessed it!! We quickly got on the phone with the doctor, who after asking a bunch of questions, advised us to take her to the Urgent Care clinic. So, we went. The port was accessed. Blood was drawn for blood cultures. The doctor came in and examined her. An antibiotic was infused. We watched "The Sound of Music" while we waited. The nurse came in to drawn new blood because apparently "they didn't know if they had mixed up the labels on her blood with another girl's in CHUC and they wanted to make sure" Yes, we rolled our eyes at that; were a bit disappointed, and have vowed to ask the nurses to do all the labeling while in the room with us, immediately after drawing blood. We waited some more, and then they released us. SO, we are home again. That's what our first visit to CHUC was. We are so glad that it was what it was, and nothing serious that required admittance to the hospital.

Specific Prayer requests:

• Please pray that Kateli's fever/temp doesn't spike about 102 tonight (or any other time, for that matter) because if it does, we will probably have to head back to the hospital.
• Please pray that the blood cultures that were done turn out to be clear
• Please pray that we can figure out the schedule for the next phase of treatment and get organized for that.
• Please give Praise to the Lord for Kateli's laughter and giggles that have seemed endless the last two days :)