New chemo

Today Eila and I came up to Doernbecher's to start her new chemo regiment.  And we came with lots of new questions/concerns.  On Sunday, the penrose drain in Eila's side (draining the hole in her kidney) suddenly stopped draining.  Joel and I were concerned about this because it was the one warning that the Michigan doctors gave us - neither drain should suddenly stop all together.  But it's been more than a month since her surgery and when the penrose stopped, the volume in the catheter increased.  The urologists at Doernbecher's thought this was a good sign and said we should just watch her output for a few days.  So Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday she had no output from her kidney drain, but then on Wednesday she complained her catheter hurt and everything flipped back the other way.  Wednesday and Thursday, almost all her output was through the penrose drain (which also smelled really bad) and her catheter was empty.  Ugh!

So when we arrived, they checked her catheter tubing, sent a urine sample from the penrose to culture, ran extra blood tests, and got an ultrasound -- all before she was admitted to the hospital for chemo.  The good news is that her catheter is working fine (it was replaced just last week), her blood tests all came back showing good kidney function, and the ultrasound had no signs of urine accumulation around her kidney.  We have to wait a few days on the culture to find out about an infection, but she's already on antibiotics.

And now for chemo ...  For the second half of her treatments she will be getting 3 new drugs over multiple days, which requires her to stay in the hospital.  The drugs themselves are giving over an hour or so, but Eila needs to receive continuous iv-fluids while these work through her system because they can be too toxic for her kidney.  Chemo itself went smoothly today, and so far she isn't experiencing any nausea.

From July/Aug2015

There's construction on the hill outside her hospital room, and Eila's interested in watching the equipment.  I'm glad it's not noisy and that it offers another distraction.

And finally, Eila's oncologists are concerned about her weight, or I should I say her lack of weight.  Since surgery, Eila has fallen off the charts again and the nutritionist would like her to start an appetite stimulant.  I'll be interested to see how this goes because Eila's never been a big eater and she rarely wants a snack between meals.  This stimulant would hopefully encourage her to eat every 2-3 hours, so we could get more calories in her more often.  Now we just have to come up with some higher calorie/higher fat snacks that she will eat, instead of her usual preference for things like carrots and strawberries.