In the Thick of It

Today is Monday and we were transferred back to the Hemo/onc floor late yesterday with stable vitals but certainly not without extra care; Madeleine has an assortment of issues we're trying to manage and balance. This round of chemo had really been going so well, it seemed only a matter of time before the "gotcha" moment. To somewhat recap, Madeleine spiked two fevers, displayed a distended belly and went into septic shock prompting the emergency response team to take her to ICU. There they focused on stabilizing her, determining the cause of her distention, the source of the infection and keeping her comfortable.

Her blood infection is nearly under control with antibiotics and the hard, melon belly she has is now the priority to help prevent her from getting a worse infection in her bowel. Her belly is also pushing upwards on her ribs and lungs making it much more difficult to breathe normally. Also without fail, the mucositis moved in Friday with minimal effect initially until the blood infection blew everything out of the water, so her pain escalated quickly; we awoke about 4am on Saturday in ICU to a screaming baby in excruciating pain and needing an urgent dose of morphine. Today our hemo/onc team confirmed she has what's called Ileus, where her bowels simply don't want to move from being sore and infected and become very slow, causing her belly to swell large and hard like a melon. These next few days were already expected to be the lull in her recovery time and the infection and ileus have exacerbated the situation. We're truly in the thick of her recovery where no news is a result of not having good news to report: this is very painful, she is extremely uncomfortable and often inconsolable when she is awake. At least now we can actively assist in improving her condition and making her feel better. Madeleine won't really start feeling better until her counts consistently come up, maybe by Wednesday or Thursday, and that will improve so many things: help her to fight off the infection, the mucositis sores will start to heal in turn making her gut feel better and improve functionally, and her breathing will improve as the gut does it's job and decreases the distention back to normal. In about a whole week she could be closer to normal, and until then, we just keep talking to her to ease her discomfort and support one another as it's increasingly hard on us. We give her medicine, it takes two to change her diaper right now by lifting her bottom gently, and understanding all the info coming from the doctors, to name a few. I read an article today on UCLA's website (the home page when you log into their wifi) about the strength of marriages. If anything has solidified our relationship, it is the illness of our child and the support we have for one another, day in and day out, without fail. For this reason, as well as all the others, I can't thank our family and friends enough for providing us with the support we need to stay together for Madeleine.

Till we can provide better news, please continue to keep Madeleine at the forefront of your prayers every day.