2 month check-up

Today was Eila's 2 month post-chemo check-up.  So, as we've become accustomed to, she had an abdominal ultrasound, chest x-rays, and blood work done today.  The ultrasound usually goes pretty well these days because she gets to watch cartoons during it.

From Jan/Feb2016

She thought it was strange/cool to see what her port looks like inside.  We don't think they'll be removing it very soon.  This is already her third port and we've been told that surgeons find it difficult to put them in after a few surgeries (they already moved it to her right side from her left).  She will eventually outgrow this one, but not for a few years, so we'll just see how long it stays around. 

From Jan/Feb2016

Eila isn't allowed to eat before her ultrasound (so they can get clear pictures of everything in there), so we were happy to have time to get lunch before heading to oncology.  And Eila decided to make it an adventure by taking the skybus down the hill and finding a food cart for lunch.  We had Thai and it was great -- she can be so adventurous at times!

From Jan/Feb2016

Luckily Eila didn't fill up on her fried rice and was able to enjoy Girl Scout cookies at oncology, and she enjoyed sharing them with her doctor and nurses.  (Thanks for the early delivery, Anya!)

From Jan/Feb2016

Every thing went well, nothing on the ultrasound or x-rays and her blood work looks good.  We talked to Dr. Thomas more about the spot on her lungs (which we didn't exactly follow up on today, it would have had to grow a lot to show up on a chest x-ray).  He wasn't concerned about it in December and we were; we did our best to push it from our minds since he said it was good that it hadn't changed, but I honestly never understood that very well. 

Dr. Thomas explained that a CT scan is really just a very fancy x-ray (it's about 200 x-rays at one time!), so when you see a more dense spot like this one on her lungs all you really know is that something is blocking more light.  A tumor can block light, but so can a small area of collapsed tissue.  Because 6 months of chemo didn't change the 3 mm spot in her lungs, he thinks it's more likely to be something like collapsed tissue.  But we'll do another CT scan around 6 months to check it again. 

So for now, it's back to being 5 years old: enjoying kindergarten, growing hair, and losing teeth.  She'll go for her next check-up in April, and she'll need to see nephrology again.