Loving Taylor

Quick post tonight as I am trying to get Taylor to bed early. We had an absolutely miserable night. She fell asleep at a decent time but I had to wake her up at 10:00 to take Tylenol. This was necessary to help with any reaction to the chemotherapy. As you can imagine, she was not happy about being woken up and having to take medicine. Since all of this has started, she despises the taste of Tylenol. She spits it out every time she has to take it. So having to be woken up to take this was no fun. She was really upset....kicking, hitting and screaming. I finally got most of the dose in her and she threw it right back up!!! They then started her chemotherapy. Because of the type of chemo and the intensity, it was necessary to monitor her blood pressure, temperature, heart rate, and oxygen level every 15 minutes for an hour. Then, it had to be done every half and hour for an hour. Then it had to be done every hour for 6 hours. So.....as you can imagine, there was no sleep. She was miserable with being hooked up to the vitals machine. She would just fall asleep and the machine would go off. I think it would be safe to say, she/I slept about 1 hour total last night. She is exhausted. She has not done much all day. Her stomach is hurting and she has no appetite. All she has eaten today is a banana. I think that her eye infection is starting again in her left eye. She wanted the shades down all day and no lights on. She rubbed her eye all day. Her cough has also come back today. Because she is coughing again, they think the Influenza A is coming back. This is very common when immunocompromised kids get the flu. They can have symptoms for a few days then they go away and come back again. So.....because she has already had Tamiflu, she can't have it again. Not sure what they are going to do....we should know more tomorrow. Today definetely was not her best day.

I wanted to also provide guidelines for anyone who is going to get the H1N1 vaccination or if they are getting it for their kids. If you or your children get the "live" virus (nasal mist), please do not plan on visiting Taylor for at least 7 days. Because the virus is considered "live", it could be passed onto her. If you or your children get the H1N1 "dead" virus (shot), you are fine to visit right away. I hope this makes sense......we can't expose Taylor to the "live" virus.

Off to get her to bed and to go to bed myself. I am working tomorrow so need to get some sleep.

Hope you had a good day.

Kristen