Home!

Maura should be able to go home tomorrow! Hurray! After nine days, home will be especially welcome, and she is happy to be reunited with her puppy. 

Ten

The count is up to ten bags hanging from her IV pole. Maura should win a prize.

Stay

We found out this morning that Maura will stay in the hospital until at least April 1. She feels "blurry," as she puts it, from the chemo, but the other medications are doing their job to make her feel okay and protect her from the toxicity of the drug.  I am very thankful that she feels okay, and it's nice to know that she is in good hands, as they monitor her closely and keep her electrolytes in sync. Her IV pole has had as many as eight bags of goodies decorating its arms. Hard to keep all of that straight.  

Hospital

Maura was finally admitted to the hospital at 10:00 p.m. on Monday night.  The hospital is crowded, and we had been waiting for a bed since 9:00 this morning. Believe it or not, chemo will begin in the middle of the night.

The Scoop

It turns out that the new chemo drugs are not working. The CT scan showed that for the first time since beginning treatment at M.D. Anderson in May, the tumors have grown. So, Maura will be going back to one of the previous chemo drugs but at a much higher dose. She will be hospitalized on Monday for about a week so that they can keep a tighter control on the dosage and her response, basically wanting her to have as much as she can tolerate but no more. We are thankful that Dr. B. is not afraid of aggressive treatment. Maura, as always, is amazing.

Die, Sarcoma, Die

Another CT-Scan on Monday and the results on Tuesday. This will be the first scan since before the long chemo break in January and since starting the new chemo meds, so we are all a bit on edge, wondering what her insides are going to look like this time. Of course, we are praying for the tumors to be "more dead" and that this new chemo regimen works as well or even better than the first.

More Platelets

Maura had another transfusion of platelets yesterday. And we wonder why she is taking the fancy boostherplatelets shot every week if it doesn't seem to be working.

Bleh

Maura is feeling lousy. The docetaxel is taking its toll. Fever, nausea, achy all over, low platelets (sigh). Hope the tumors feel as lousy as she does.

Scare

When Maura came back from a few days in Austin, she told me of a pain in her side that had been there for a couple of weeks, but had only recently become more than just a bother. In fact, she hadn't been able to sleep for the last couple of nights. Two weeks! Pain in her abdomen is scary, especially with the recent delays in chemo and the switch to a new chemo regimen. We were frightened. We prayed. We worried. We once again felt some of those dark moments from last spring. Two days later, Dr. B. said he couldn't feel anything, but that, of course, was no guarantee. He ordered some lab work and sent her to chemo as scheduled. Two additional days later, the nurse called to say Maura had an infection. An infection? Really? A garden variety UTI? Relief washed over us as we nearly danced our way to the pharmacy to pick up the prescribed antibiotic.
"People aren't usually this happy to hear they have a UTI," the nurse observed.
Perspective. It's all a matter of perspective.