No clearing in sight.......

Nanaw and sadie

Sadie behind the nurses station hangin out

patrick and sadie

the glennon clocks

        So, we are still at the hospital.  Sadie has encountered a few problems that have set us back from going home.  First and foremost, her kidney fuction has been a concern.  Everyone of us has a creatinine baseline, and when that makes a big jump of any kind, it is a concern that our kidneys are in distress of some sort, especially after recieving a 24 hour chemo drip. By creatnine, I mean the ability to remove/filter waste through the kidneys.  Sadies creatinine made that suspicious climb within 24 hours of the chemo, so it has since been monitered every 12 hours along with the methotrexate levels in the blood.  Protocal/research says that methotrexate should clear the body within 48 hours.  Well, as you can plainly see from this post and earlier posts, this has never been the case for sadie.  Our shortest stay with this type of treatment has been four days.  This go round, we are about to approach our sixth day, and we will be lucky to get out of here before the eighth. 
        Her not clearing the methotrexate is our second set back.  They have had her maxed out on the ammount of fluids allowed for a child of her size, in hopes to flush it out faster, and to help with the kidneys, but her body has yet to rid it.  It is very slowly moving through her.  If the chemo clears within 48 hours, it does little damage to the "good cells" since its a cell specific drug, but.......any chemo left behind beyond the 48 hour mark starts knocking out everything.  Needless to say, Sadies blood, platelets, and whites have drastically been reduced.  A blood transfusion is in her near future, but I forsee her platelets recovering on their own.  Dont ask me how I know that, I just do.  Her pattern, her body and her treatment, is all I educate myself on at the moment.  Every chemo drug targets cells in a different way, and as I've said before, they are all count lowering, but..... methotrexate is "suppose" to be one of those that isnt extremely bone marrow supressive cause its "suppose" to leave the body fairly quickly.  "Suppose" to my ass!!!!! Like most harmful drugs though, the longer it remains in the body, the more damage it does to it.  This is where we are at with it now. 
        Our third set back is the fever.  This is sadies fourth treatment like this within two months, and every time, like clock work, she spikes that damn fever.  You'd think they would figure it out, cause each time the fever gets higher and lasts days longer.  Their only response is, "we dont know why she does that".  I have researched it myself, and its a form of an allergic response to one of the drugs given to help lessen the toxicity affects of the methotrexate.  This medicine is given every six hours starting 18 hours after the methotrexate is completely infused, and she has to have it to protect her organs.  With each admission we have had for this treatment, after that first dose of the rescue med, she starts in with the fever.  Now tell me thats not the cause of it........I also believe, this is the exact reason why she always needs a blood transfusion after this specific treatment.  In addition to the chemo affecting the production of blood, fevers feed off of it and eat it up.
        Its so hard to explain all of this in terms that anybody could understand, if you cant follow me, im sorry.  When I first started educating on all of this, it was a foreign language to me, and now I find it hard to explain in non-medical terms lol........Again, I appologize if I am hard to follow.  I know what I want to say, but I am trying to word it so its some what understandable.  Anyway..........sadie had a horrible night last night, she had to take meds at 1am, and she hates being woke up.  The first time we tried, she spit it all over me.  The second time we tried, she gagged on it and out it came.  Finally, i was like, lets try the pill form.  Yes, Sadie girl knows how to swallow pills, but at night the liquid is given cause it is so much easier than trying to get her to drink down two pills when shes throwing a tantrum cause her beauty sleep was disturbed.  The med was the rescue med I just mentioned and it has to be taken exactly on time, so she had no choice in the matter.  The shitty part, is that every med needed has to be ordered, and sent up from the pharmacy.  She kept falling back asleep before the new dose arrived.  She finally wound up taking the pill form, but she was so upset about it.  I secretly cried after she was settled back in bed, I HATE seeing her upset, and she will upset herself so bad that she will start vomitting.
        With her hemoglobin being low, in combination with the chemo, she was very tired today, and not herself.  She did however get a small burst of energy and played kick ball with Patrick in the halls.  She had her nurse calling every floor today looking for blue popsicles.  We have popsicles on the floor, just not the blue ones, and what she wants, she gets.  Every floor started sending up blue popsicles through the transport tubes that run through the hospital.  She says, "popsicles are falling from the sky".  She is so spoiled by her nurses.  Sometimes, they just come and take her from me, and I'll find her behind the nurses desk just hanging out.  She'll look at me and say, "go back to your room mom".  Im so happy that she has taken to them like she has.  They all fight over who gets to be her nurse for the day, its so funny, and so reassuring to me, cause it shows that they really care about her.  Its not just a job for them, its a passion. 
        Maw was with us monday-thursday, and nanaw was with us thursday-friday.  Tonight, shes got me and dad.  We went exploring earlier in the wagon, we covered every floor. Friday nights are so dead here, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to see some new scenery (with her full face mask in tact of course).  Sadie calls these outings, "ventures".  There are beautiful, moving clocks scattered around the whole hospital, and each time we come, we revisit them and try to find new ones.  She had a good time, and it was nice to see new things. 
        This is off subject, but I feel really bad about it.  I was so aggravated earlier in the week.  There was a little boy across from us, I'd say between 1-1 1/2 yrs old, that cried non stop.  He was here before we got here, so I dealt with it from day one of admission.  All hours of the night and day, this child cried, and cried, and cried.  It didnt matter if you shut your door and turned the TV up, you could hear this kid crying throughout the entire fourth floor.  Seriously!!!!!  It got to the point that sadie started questioning me about him, and she was clearly upset by this constant crying.  This is when I got mad.  Not at the child, but at the mother.  She refused to shut the door to her room, and she would not hold that baby to soothe him if her life depended on it.  CLOSE YOUR FUCKING DOOR, AND TEND TO YOUR SON!!!!!  No exaggerating, you could not sleep.  He cried 20 hours out of the day.  So anyway, I peeked in on him one day while the mother was away, and he had a broken arm and a broken leg, on opposite sides of the body.  I initially thought the way the mother was towards this child was weird, but when I saw the injuries, I knew something wasnt right.  Wed night, I saw the mother walk out with what appeared to be three of her friends, and she never returned.  The next day, social services came and took the baby.  She was linked to being a cause of the injuries, and my guess is that she got word of that, and bailed out.  How? and Why?, is all I can think.  People are so F'ed up.  I feel so bad now for getting so aggravated, and wishing he would go home. Now, all I want to do is give him a hug.  That baby cried so much cause he was neglected and abused.
        Well sadie is sound asleep, so I am gonna hopefully join her.  I have the hardest time falling asleep, my mind never stops.  Sweet dreams to all.........