How many pokes?

As we are taking the lift down to the car park at Children's this afternoon, Isabella says "you had better write about this on the blog!" I am not sure about Isabella, but I would rank today as being very high on the list of worse days since this journey began. Isabella received more needles than I can imagine today. As she retold the story, the number of pokes increased but I would definitely agree it was double digits. After nearly 6 hours at the hospital, numerous attempts by 3 nurses, several x-rays and finally a handful of attempts by the surgeon, we saw blood coming out of her port. Isabella took the words right out of my mouth "I could hug you and kiss you!" This came right after the most blood curling screams and look of fear on her little face, but she was right, what a relief.

Behind my (I hope) tough exterior I was already imagining another surgery to remove this port and fit a new one. Gregorio was in touch by phone and email as the day progressed. There were shades of almost a year ago (yesterday) when I had called him in Cyprus to say Isabella had a brain tumor. Then, he had been left speechless and only after several minutes finally managed to say "I'm coming home tonight"; today, he didn't say it, but I know he was already envisaging jumping on the next flight out of Nairobi. Thankfully today's drama did not lead to the operating theatre and all was resolved.

For some reason Isabella's port is a little roamer and if the person accessing her port doesn't get exactly the right spot at the right angle then it doesn't work. I asked the nurses who would get the short straw next week to access Isabella? They smiled. Right now we'll just relax, happy that today is over.

Maybe you are wondering why they have to get a blood return from the port? They need to make sure the line is not broken or that there is no blood clot in the line so that anything they administer to her through her port goes into her vein. Apparently the vincristine is extremely powerful, you should see the care they take to make sure not a drop touches any skin, it would burn you.

There was some good news though, her ANC has skyrocketed to over 1000 and so we were able to get back to the full dose of both vincristine and carboplatin. It was truly a long day but we can now tick off round 2 of cycle 6.

Love,

Emma & Gregorio. xxx