On Saturday afternoon, we were still inpatient at Hopkins and with little improvement. Scott and I were both at the hospital and I was getting ready to come home for the night, but I couldn’t leave because Bridget was crying in pain. The doctor was summoned and came to evaluate the situation. Outside of one previously mentioned bowel movement on Thursday night, she had only had a few loose stools daily. The doctors explained that this was the stuff going around the big stool blockage, but that it would slowly chip away at it all and things would get moving. We were in a tough place. Her pain was bad, despite getting dilaudid every 6 hours. It didn’t seem to be cutting it anymore. However, the doctors didn’t want to add anything else because even the dilaudid was working against her bowel, since pain meds add constipation. That being said, they didn’t want her crying in pain either (which is why they had restarted the dilaudid after her first few bowel movements). I know many of you asked why they wouldn’t just give her an enema. The doctors admitted that would have probably worked much faster. However, with her blood counts being so low, that was an “extreme” infection risk. So, they were stuck trying the tackle the situation from the top, rather from the bottom. Her ANC on Friday was 0.   On Saturday, it was back to 0.01. Her platelets dropped further as did her hemoglobin. On Friday she had to have another blood transfusion because her hemoglobin was 7.3. Her fevers disappeared but spiked again for a short time on Friday night, causing them to do more blood cultures. Her urine culture came back positive at the 24-hour mark, but at 48 hours it showed growth of several types of bacteria, most of which were common skin bacteria. Thus, they ruled this out as a false positive, especially since she was asymptomatic in that department (and covered with the iv antibiotics she was getting regardless).

So, it was still a waiting game. We needed the fevers to stay away, the blood counts to come up, and the abdominal pain to decrease. We did all we could to distract her from the pain.

One thing that was distracting that we worked on daily was updating Bridget’s Beads of Courage strand. Beads of Courage is a program where patients earn beads for certain milestones met. For example, you get a red bead for each blood transfusion, a yellow bead for each overnight stay, a light green for each scan, etc. Bridget and I worked really hard to put all her beads on the strand in chronological order. It all started with an ER visit (magenta bead). We are caught up through last Saturday after her second chemo admission.   This was a good stopping place because we filled her first entire string.

So, now it is Sunday and WE ARE HOME. Bridget said she started feeling better a few hours after I left yesterday. She said Daddy must have brought some poop good luck because she went to the bathroom six times over a twelve-hour period. Her ANC came up to .22 (criteria to go home is .2 and rising).   She still has some pain here and there and is still using the bathroom frequently…but things are moving. The poop is moving out and the blood counts are moving up. Everything is moving in the right direction. It’s obvious she is feeling so much better. I was hoping to catch a nap this afternoon, but Bridget was chatting away. She also declared she was going swimming. She said she wasn’t going to go any further into the summer without getting into a pool. Scott and I were a bit weary about this, but we waited until the sun went down some and let her get in. She only lasted about 20 minutes before she tired out, but she was so happy.   We had a quiet evening afterward, catching up on the episodes of Big Brother she missed while hospitalized. It’s good to be home.

Once again, our time home will be short. Tuesday we’ll return to finally get the PET/CT Scan (pray for a good response to the chemo) and ECHO (pray for no damage to her heart). Wednesday, we’ll be admitted for Course 3. We’re almost halfway there!