September 19, 2008 (Friday)

Gracie in the cancer clinic today.

What excitement today! I was feeling really good today after a night's rest, had dropped my oldest child at school and was nearly at work- when I got a phone call from home saying that Gracie's temperature was 102F. We were told by our doctor in Houston that if Gracie ever ran a fever of more than 101F that she should go directly to the emergency room. So I turned the car around and headed back home. We dropped kids off at a friend's home and headed to the emergency with Gracie. I felt pretty silly doing this since we would have never considered taking a child with a small fever to the emergency before and Gracie was really doing quite well with it. In fact she was mad that she had to come and could not stay at our friend's home. By the time we got to the hospital (30 minutes later), Gracie no longer had a fever. So we stayed in the parking lot and called the nurse practitioner and Dr. M in Houston. They both said that we still needed to have her looked at and Dr. M even said that we would likely need to be admitted for 2 days. So then we called Dr. L, our oncologist here (who happens to work right next to the emergency room). Her office said just to come over there and they would run the tests and do what was needed. So we went into the cancer clinic. Now they have told us that whenever Gracie has a fever that we should never go to emergency here but rather take her directly to the cancer clinic (where we went today) or to the cancer unit at the hospital (if it is not regular office hours). In Houston the emergency room has special procedures for cancer patients but at the hospital here we are just suppose to skip the emergency room all together.

Gracie did not want to wear the mask they gave her but was really excited to see the child life specialist and her doll Sammie again. Gracie helped Sammie take medicine and get all the pokes to make him feel better. Gracie had blood work done and got checked out by a nurse on the unit. She was fine throughout the visit and loved watching Dora the Explorer. She did not like having her port accessed but was really good once it had been. I do not blame her one bit for that, I was nervous with them sticking a needle into her chest. She is a brave little girl and unfortunately knows how to work around an IV pole quite well.

They gave Gracie some antibiotics just to be safe and lots of fluids so that she was not dehydrated. She was very kind to all the nurses and doctors. Some football players from the local college football team even came in to say hi to all of the patients. Gracie was not as impressed as many of the kids there and mostly just ignored them to watch Dora the Explorer but it was kind of them to stop in.

So to summarize we left our home for the hospital before 9AM and arrived home just after 3PM after having been in the cancer clinic most of that time. They also want to do more blood work tomorrow and so we need to go to the cancer unit in the hospital tomorrow for more. 

One of the big reasons that they were concerned was that her blood counts were at 900 yesterday. So today when they did the preliminary tests were between 1250 and 1300. They were not really sure why the discrepancy but think it was probably elevated today because Gracie was trying to fight an infection. It is really good that Gracie was able to try to fight off the infection in her condition. So after the blood work they told us that we probably would not need to admit Gracie to the hospital for the night. We were happy about that but really want to make sure we do whatever Gracie needs.

So hopefully this is not what will happen one week after each of Gracie's chemotherapy treatments but I know that things could be a lot worse. She came home from the hospital and fell asleep, only to wake up at 10:00PM. Now she is having a hard time sleeping again as she would rather talk to me or play with the dog. Even when it is time for Gracie's beautiful, bright eyes to shut, I cannot help but think how blessed we are to have her in our family. She just makes me so happy with her big smile and her constant energy.