Sunday, November 21, 2010

Home...so nice!


November 21, 2010

Josie is HOME!  On Friday the Oncologist for this week came in and said she didn’t see any reason that Josie couldn’t go home for a little while.  Even though she is on chemotherapy right now, these particular drugs are not the ones that will drop her blood counts.  News to us…but good news!  Josie’s reflux has also improved greatly since the last time I posted – we know without a doubt that this is due to God answering our (and your) prayers on behalf of this issue.   The 11-12 refluxes in an hour was pretty exhausting – for Josie and for us.  Along with these improvements, the doctor noted that Josie was not needing as much of the nurses care any longer – they were giving her medicine and other basic care, but the rest of the care came from me and Marc.  The Occupational, Physical and Speech therapists have showed us how do much of Josie’s therapy and felt they didn’t need to come see Josie as much since we were working with her so well.  I think we both should have new degrees once we get through all of this! 

Josie will need to go back to the hospital on November 30th for a different chemo drug in this cycle.  This particular drug is the one in this cycle that will possibly drop her blood counts, so she will need to stay for a couple of weeks (so they say) to be watched in case her counts do go down. 

Once we arrived home yesterday and unloaded our bags of stuff that we accumulated over the past month, our house looked like it had been trashed!  In order to not have more chaos, Marc’s parents took the girls for the rest of the weekend – this took a bit of the stress level away.  Thankfully we had thought a little ahead of time and bought a 7 drawer storage bin yesterday morning.  The bin seemed huge when I brought it into the house, but we filled it completely with all of Josie’s supplies for her 9 day stay at home! 

We are administering two of Josie’s chemotherapy drugs, giving her a plethora of other medications (see picture that Marc posted today) and we have to flush her broviac central line every day.  We gave medications to Josie previously, but this time it is elevated to a whole new level.  Administering the chemo is a bit nerve racking, especially the first time, but we did it and are more than willing to do it since it means she can be home with us!

We continue to be amazed by how quickly things can change for Josie and we are extremely pleased to have Josie home even for a short time.  This Thanksgiving will truly be a thankful time for our family this year. 

Blessings,
Marc & Darcia

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