Day 129 - a few more weeks

5th Cycle: 
Day 11 of chemo/Day +7 BMT

They are two different things though the same; Madeleine's protocol included induction chemo at the beginning so our cycles did not start at Day -1 for instance. Bone marrow transplant cycles do begin that way; conditioning chemo is scheduled as Day -4 and day 0 is the day of the transplant. 

Madeleine is kinda both. For the purpose of making an educated guess when her counts may begin to rise, they use the BMT day 0. The attending physician this morning said that an educated guess would be that given today is Day+7, she could likely be discharged between week 2 & 3, which would be the week of the 18th. And this is assuming Madeleine can continue without infection, fever or other incident. Our beloved Dr Davidson is getting married next weekend and we have missed our daily visits with her as she is ridiculously busy. She did come by this morning though to reassure us that although she may not be showing her face in the unit every day, she is constant contact with the attending physicians and follows along on Madeleine's charting daily. 

Things have been pretty uneventful & that's a good thing. The only thing to really report is that we finally got a hold of the emesis with the meds so she's not throwing up several times a day. We are feeding a little more frequently in smaller amounts to help with that as well. Madeleine seems to be feeling really good despite her counts being near bottom because she would rather stay up and play all day; her naps have been reduced to no longer than an hour and a half for both morning and afternoon naps. The last few days she's gone to bed earlier as a result. She's then sleeping lightly when they come in at 4am to do vitals and the kid is awake for at least an hour. Mom looks like this: x_x

I can't bring myself to fall asleep when she's awake, just in case she starts coughing up mucous I worry about her choking on it or aspirating. I'm having a hard time feeling rested because I can't catch up on sleep. And this cycle I think I mentioned I'm pretty much chained to the hospital since M has refused a bottle completely, so no chance of sleeping at home at night for me either. She's also been a little stubborn in trying cereal and food, so any bright ideas, please feel free to let me know. 
We're starting to get ready for life at home. Today Madeleine began her physical therapy assessments in addition to her regular therapy. We're taking advantage of the PT orders already written for her to give us a good idea after treatment so there's no significant lapse in time before she'll begin therapy once she's discharged pending all the insurance paperwork, etc. Looking forward to a quiet weekend...