Monday, October 12, 2009

Frustrated

Today Kayla had a doctor appointment for labs, or so I thought. We went in and had to be isolated (again) because Kayla still has a cough. Thank God Jimmy's sister Heidi sent Kayla an ipod with "Horton Hears a Who" on it. There were no movie carts available.
Anyway, they take her blood and send it off to the lab. I always expect that the lab will be running behind and today was no exception. We waited a little over 2 hours for her counts to come back. Before labs came back I talked to the head nurse and asked her if Kayla was going to get chemo. She said that it was only day 7 (Her road map calls for every 10 days) so she probably wouldn't get chemo. Then when her labs came she paged the Dr. to ask if he wanted to give any chemo. Kayla's ANC is 687 which is under the 750 minimum to get chemo. I assumed that she was only going to get Vincrystine since it doesn't really lower counts and is pretty mild compared to other chemo drugs. He called back and said that we would just skip to day 21. The nurse said that she would get chemo today and PEG (a shot in each leg) tomorrow.
The tech comes in and Kayla asks "How many chemos and I getting?"
"Three" she says.
I said "What do you mean there are three?"
"Well one of the is Zofran" (an anti-nausea medicine) says the tech.
"The other ones are Vincrystine and Methotrexate"
My heart dropped out of my butt.
"No, she is only getting Vincrystine" I said.
"It says on the orders that she is getting both" says the tech.
The tech then walks out and asks the nurse if Kayla is supposed to get both. The nurse says yes and walks in the room.
"We are starting day 21 so she is getting the chemos that are listed for day 21" said the nurse.
At this point I was livid. I had been told 4 different things and I wasn't sure what was going on at that point. All I knew was that the ANC killer (aka Methotrexate) was about to be administered to Kayla. I turned away and tears started running down my cheeks.
I am so afraid that we are going to have a repeat of last time when she got sick from the chemo and somehow caught the flu and c-diff.
Then the Dr. came over from the big hospital (he had been doing rounds) and he could tell that I was not happy. He asked me what was wrong and I told him that I wasn't happy about her getting Methotrexate. I told him how afraid I was that her ANC would go to 0 and that she would have to be admitted. He told me "This is what happens with chemo, levels drop and sometimes they have to be admitted."
I said " Well yeah but she has been admitted 14 times."
He didn't have anything to say about that so I moved on to my question.
"Is there anything stronger for her nausea? Last time she had methotrexate she was nauseous and threw up."
He ended up prescribing Zofran in a higher dose.
So far Kayla has only complained of feeling a little dizzy, but besides that she is feeling fine.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

REading this post, I felt angry. This is the sort of thing that really irritates me about this protocol.

Why did they skip? Why did they give her MTX? It makes NO SENSE!!

Glad that she is doing well, gloves and masks, and no visiting!! thinking of you.

P.

Anonymous said...

REading this post, I felt angry. This is the sort of thing that really irritates me about this protocol.

Why did they skip? Why did they give her MTX? It makes NO SENSE!!

Glad that she is doing well, gloves and masks, and no visiting!! thinking of you.

P.

Kristin said...

That sounds frustrating..