Pic line time

With the news of Immunosuppression starting we needed to do something fast for all these treatments coming up. We decided a PIC line was the way to go. Avery was getting all meds through IV up until now... we are starting with Oncology on 5-4-15..so in 3 days. She would have to be put under for placement of the line and like always that stresses us out. Avery was a champ and did fantastic and we are all set to go in 3 days! There are negative and positives with a pic line instead of a port(which at some point she will have)A pic line can't get wet, needs to have weekly dressing changes and needs to be flushed daily which we would be in charge of. Heading into summer our biggest worry was keeping it dry(no swimming etc. ) We became nurses overnight and caught on rather quickly. The dressing changes however did not go smoothly so we insisted on a nursing company to come to our house and change it weekly.

getting ready to go under

showing us where the line will be

after eating her purple popsicle

there it is! Purple means power!

Oncology...the start of it all

Oncology was a whole new world for us. I never dreamed we would be seeing the walls of the Oncology floor along with the several others that we already see. Oncology because of the drugs that go along with the suppression. Dr. Stockton is not familiar with these and Oncology uses these often. After all this immunosuppression is basically Chemotherapy just a different protocol than normal cancer chemo. Ours would be drawn out for several month but mainly the same drugs used during chemo. She would be getting Velcade, Methotrexate, Rituximab and IVIG this along with her bi-weekly infusion of Lumizyme. Starting chemo meant no more school and no more dance because of germs and here weakened immune system. She would be put on a running antibiotic of Bactrim( every M,W,F for the duration)This all was sickening for us! OMG Just when I thought things couldn't get worse...here we are sitting in the oncology waiting room and all three of us had no idea what we were about to go through.

waiting in the waiting room

psycho about gloves

read these and tell me you don't have a huge knot in your throat.

painting and passing time

dressing change time

no school letter

our protocol for the next few months