Abby's Journey Archive

We went in to see Dr. Abella yesterday to check Abby's counts and confirm that she had recovered sufficiently from her cold to begin chemo--her draw looked good though she sure didn't appreciate the stick. We also confirmed that the BMT unit would be ready for us on Monday at University Medical Center down in Tucson.

So here we are again at Banner Children's Hospital (they just got permission to change the name of the Children's Center), admitted this time like clockwork. She is being pre-hydrated now and will start the first of the three chemo drugs, Cisplatin, as soon as they think she has enough fluid on board.

One of Cisplatin's side effects is possible hearing problems in the upper registers. We had her hearing tested just a few days ago so we would have a baseline to compare with. Please pray for this issue, as well as for good tolerance on her part against all the other myriad side effects these drugs bring. The other two drugs are Vincristine and Cytoxan.

The chemo regimen will last about 3 days, we will have a day of post-hydration, then we go to Tucson to infuse stem cells.