March Appointment

Last Friday was Anya's scheduled monthly appointment. Most of the morning before she arrived in the procedure room, she was crying because she wasn't able to eat and was tired. But thankfully she was able to fall back to sleep after she & Israel got settled in the room, and woke up feeling much better after everything was finished. And by the time she got home, she was cheerful!

Later that day we received a call from Joy, Anya's nurse. Apparently Anya's liver enzyme level was elevated which means that her liver was fighting to clear something out (which probably explains why she had been so tired the couple days previous). According to the doctor it was most likely trying to clear out whatever virus she had in the last month or so.

Because her daily chemo is filtered through her liver and the doctors don't wish to work her liver more than necessary, they asked us to discontinue her daily chemo medication (while continuing her five days of steroids). They also asked us to bring Anya back in on Monday the 16th for more lab work so they can check to see if her levels have returned to normal, and to see if they can detect a virus that may have caused the problem.

Anya completed her five days of steroids on Wednesday morning, praise the Lord! Some rounds of steroids are harder than others, and I would say that this one was more difficult than some. She was up through the night unable to sleep three different nights - poor thing! One morning she even apologized for having to wake me up in the night - what a sweet princess!

Wednesday was the first night in as long as I can remember that she didn't have to take medication. I must admit that it was kind of nice. Of course, in the big picture, we want her to be able to take as much chemo as possible to make sure that the leukemia does not return. But in the short term, the break was great! So we'll enjoy these few days of medicine free living as much as possible!