One of the things that has caused Ann and me the most grief while we are at MDA is that we had to give up our cats. It is unfair that they had to suffer because of this. Thankfully we located them good homes and they are being well taken care of. Ann's absolute favorite is a black and white tom named Jay, or "Bunny Cat". She calls him that because as a kitten he would jump like a rabbit. Jay is her lap cat and is always trying to get attention from her. During Ann's first round of chemo (Day 5) I was passing by the gift shop and noticed a toy animal that looked pretty close to the real thing and got it for her.
It's an odd truth that a hospital can be a hard place to rest, let alone sleep. This is especially true of the PE Wing Ann was admitted during both rounds of chemo so far. Nurses are always coming in and checking vitals, sometimes as frequently as ever 15 minutes, depending on the medication she is getting. Once Ann got fake "Bunny" she had a much better time getting some rest. It would still be nice to have the genuine article, but as a stuffed toy goes he is doing a pretty good job.
I need to do some more updating from yesterday. Ann got her third lumbar puncture (picture left) and we are hoping that the results of it are as good as the previous ones. The Nurse administering the test (in the picture left) reminds me of our real-estate agent in Baton Rouge. Brassy and vibrant, I think of her as a grand old dame. She likes Ann and does her best not to cause any discomfort. One of the particularly nasty things about the disease Ann has is that it has a tendency to find it's way into the central nervous system and set up shop there. Brain and spinal tumors can follow.
A sign that this might have happened is a high level of LDH in a patent's blood when they are first examined. Ann had a very high LDH number, in the 4000's when she got to MDA. Lucky though there has been no sign of the disease in her spine and the chemo they are injecting into her spine is a precaution to keep things that way. We have a total of 8 lumbar punctures to undergo before the end of treatment.
Ann is taking Methotrexate to start off the second round of her chemo. They are checking her blood and urine ph constantly. When they reach a certain level then they are going to start her on Cytarabine. For those of you who want to know Methotrexate and Cytarabine are antimetabolites. The idea being that antimetaboties prevent fast multiplying cells from dividing this stops cancer cells from multiplying and they eventually go into apoptosis (cell death). The problem with this is that the chemo drugs can't tell the good cells from the cancer cells and so all of the cells in her bone marrow get the same treatment. However given some recovery time the good cells should recover and the cancer should die out. Notice the use of the word "should" in that last sentence.It's about 11am now. Ann is tired and wants to sleep. Her friend Tina is coming in later this afternoon, so she will need to have some strength for that. I am going to sneak off to get some lunch.
Update 1
Tina and Joe stopped by today and Ann was very happy to see them. She is having a pretty good day and not showing much evidence of tiredness. It's also nice to see her laugh with Tina. Tina lives in NYC and it makes me wonder if NYC would have been a good choice also.
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