Out of the hospital...again

Let's hope the fourth time is the charm. After Abby's admission to the hospital on Monday, we were released on Wednesday. They never found a cause for the fever. On Thursday morning, she developed another fever. It was staying right around 101, so we decided to just watch it at home. Right at bedtime, however, it began to go up again very quickly and went up to 102.4. At that point, Alexis was asleep so Leonard took Abby to the ER on his own while I stayed with Alexis. When they reached the hospital, they didn't show her to be running an axillary fever, but her heart rate was in the 180's. When they took her temp rectally (a big no no for chemo patients, so I don't know why the did it), she was running almost 102. Based on her heart rate, she was admitted to the Intermediate Care Unit, which is a step down from ICU.

On Friday, they went ahead and did radiation, thankfully. Her fever also broke and never returned. She has been having a lot of problems with secretions caused by both the radiation and the breakdown of the tumor, so they decided to keep her until Sunday to watch her breathing.

We also got the results of last Wednesday's MRI. It contained both good and bad news. The good news is that the tumor is shrinking, overall, especially in the eye and brain area. It is still up in the brain cavity, but is smaller in size overall. The bad news is that the tumor still shows growth in her airway area. We don't know the cause for the growth and her oncologist and the radiation doctor are supposed to be coming up with a plan for how to treat this. Abby only has seven more radiation treatments out of the original 28, so we don't know if they will extend radiation or increase the dosage in that area. Hopefully they will come up with a plan in the next day or two. If it comes down to it, they could always do a tracheotomy, but we aren't to the point of discussing that option yet.

We are hoping to avoid any fevers for quite awhile, especially since her counts are good and they have been unable to find a cause. Alexis also started to come down with a cold today, so we will have to try and keep some distance between her and Abby.

On another good note, Abby's speech continues to increase. The nurses were even able to hear her talk some this stay. They even heard words other than no. It is so nice to have her answer questions about what she wants and where she hurts. I love hearing some of her phrases again such as "What's that? That baby." Then we ask what baby's name is. Her response is always "Alexi". Of course I'll also never tire of hearing the word Mommy.