Pizza..yummy!

On Tuesday, Anya was admitted to the hospital for a spinal tap (intrathecal chemo), intravenous chemo, and her intravenous preventative antibiotic. She is not permitted to eat for several hours prior to her sedated spinal taps and this combined with the medication being "late" from the pharmacy made for a difficult morning with an unhappy, hungry Anya. But aren't we thankful things weren't much worse?!

Fortunately after she woke up she was allowed to eat. So after getting some pizza into her hungry tummy and after the "sleepy medicine" wore off, Anya was back to her normal cheerful self. We did have a little "scare" while she was receiving her antibiotic - her heartrate rose to 144! But the attentive ICU nurse responded by decreasing the speed of the infusion and Anya's heartrate returned to normal so she was able to return home after being watched for an hour.

Anya's next appointment isn't until this Friday, December 7th. If her counts are high enough, she will receive two more chemotherapy medications intravenously followed by a two week recovery period.

Following this recovery period, she is scheduled to go back on steroids (starting Dec 22nd). The time Anya was on steroids a couple months ago was the most difficult time thus far (other than her initial hospital stay). The dexamethasone steroid is the drug that made Anya moody, unreasonable, unhappy, discouraged, constantly hungry, and terribly demanding. We pray that God would spare her from these common side effects and give us the strength to care for her. We have seen God spare Anya from other terrible typical side effects and from multiple infections and we praise Him.