Consolidation Day 13:

It’s been a rough week. I think this round is really hitting Scarlett hard. It’s very difficult to deal with because she doesn’t know how to tell us what is wrong. We try to prevent any nausea by giving her meds around the clock every day. But for the last week she has been throwing terrible tantrums at 7:00 every night. Something little sets her off – like I opened the door instead of her, or her blankie was upside down. For the next 45 minutes she is screaming, kicking, hitting, biting…deep down I know that what set her off is not the real problem but it’s hard not to take it personally when I get slapped in the face with a stray hand.

I think that the real problem is that her nausea medication doesn’t last the whole six hours that it is prescribed for. It is really only lasting four, at the most. Last night we gave her a dose early and she didn’t have the scheduled tantrum. Unfortunately this meant that she was awake at 5am with a tummy ache. This afternoon, after her nap, she has been shaky and been almost throwing up. She is starting to understand and tell me she has a sick tummy. Hopefully she will be able to do that again tomorrow and make it a little easier to prevent her sickies.

All day today, she has has been really warm. Every time I take her temperature it gets a little higher. She peaked at 100.1 a few hours ago. She asked to go outside and swing (which I can’t imagine helped her tummy). She likes to bring her big panda and use it as a pillow. She can almost fall asleep sitting up in the swing. Since then her temperature has gone down. I’m very happy about that as I was getting ready to pack a bag to go to the hospital.

It’s now been a few hours since I started writing this post. Scarlett’s temperature hit 102.0 at 7pm. So we rushed her to Green Bay and she was admitted to the hospital tonight. Her white count is down to 0.3 which means that she pretty much doesn’t have any cells to fight an infection. She had blood cultures, an IV antibiotic and IV anti fungal and a chest X-ray. Her platelets have also dropped to 15 so she will have a transfusion tomorrow. I was aware of this possibility and am confident that she will be fine but there is one statement from her oncologists that is sticking in my mind. I just don’t want her to have any more setbacks.