Clinic Day

Outside the hospital by the fountain

The Nemo fish tank outside the elevators

Today we had our routine clinic visit up at Primary Childrens. Right when we walked in the door Livi saw her little friend Amelia, she has the same type of cancer Livi does and they are the same age and they are both so cute! Livi always talks about her and whenever we have to do anything (port access, shaving of the head...) she asks if Amelia has to do it too. Its the cutest thing ever since they have only actually met twice, but we look at Amelia's blog page a lot too so thats probably where she knows her from.

So today Alivia's counts weren't too bad, but they were a LOT better last week....

ANC-1800 the cells that fight off infection, they were 7600 last week :(

HCT- 29 (Hermatacrit)

PLTS- 732 (platelets)

WBC- 4.7 (white blood cells)

When we first walk in, they get her height and weight and her vital signs, I need to start keeping track so....

HEIGHT: 106.0

WEIGHT: 19.2 KG

Then her blood pressure was:

110/66

Then we go back into her room where we wait for a minute until the nurse comes in and then they access her port.....oh my gosh, I keep thinking its going to get easier but its not, its only getting worse and this time she kept kicking the poor nurse. Luckily Aunt Jessica was with us so I held her hands down while Jessica held her legs. Its so terrible! Then the Child Life Specialist comes in to talk to her and asks her if she wants any games or books or toys. The Child Life people are so awesome, their job from what I gather is to just make the kids happy and they just want them to have fun! What a fun job! I feel like I can really ask them anything about her behavior or how to handle certain things, they are all just really amazing people.

Then this week we had a Lumbar Puncture and we tried something a little different for the sedation. We usually go downstairs to the RTU (rapid treatment unit) but we thought we would give this other type a try. I cant decide if I liked it, she was basically awake the whole time, they gave her some anesthesia to make her sleepy like at the dentist but her eyes were still open, (rolling around, teary, sleepy) and I was able to be in the room for the whole procedure. I'm not sure I liked watching that.....little freaky....that needle is probably 3 inches long!!!! AAHHHHHH!! Yeah I dont think we'll be doing that again......But other than that it was a really good clinic visit!