It's been a busy 10 days.....

2200 25/11/09

Apologies for the lack of updates, but It's been a very busy week since Anouk came home Monday 16/11 after finishing her 2nd cycle of Chemo. Thankyou to everyone who came to visit...it helps make us feel normal again!

Monday evening 16/11 & Tues 17/11 were fairly uneventful, aside from the fact that Anouk has decided that her sleep schedule will now be 9pm to 6am...great!

Wednesday 18/11 was Kidney function testing morning back at the Marsbar & all is in order there. It was then back home for Wednesday afternoon picking Neave up from Ballet etc.

There was a little bit of excitement at about 0300 Thursday morning when Anouk started to vomit & I thought I had my finger on her Nasal tube...but no...so it came out most of the way & we had to pull it completely out & cut it off. The next morning the Community nurser came first thing & had the job of inserting a new one....Anouk isn't a great fan AT ALL of this process...!

Then we got a phone call that morning from the Marsbar to say that one of the mothers on the ward had got or been in contact with someone who had Chicken Pox & as a result all the patients had to be treated, in our case a trip to the local hospital for a rather painful jab in Anouk's bum!

Friday the Community nurse was back to start the GCSF..not too sure what this stands for but...it's a drug that stimulates the stem cells in the blood stream. This continued on both Saturday & Sunday at the local hospital for about an hour per visit.

Shock horror....on Saturday night we had friends around for dinner...socialising...it was great, a sense of normal life!

Catherine & Anouk went back into the Marsbar Monday afternoon this week in preparation for Tuesdays Stem cell harvesting. This involved a general anaesthetic at 11am to have a tube inserted into her groin to get the blood from. Amazingly Anouk woke up very well from the anaesthetic & there was very little drama...a stark contrast to the last 3! Blood was taken for 4 hours Tuesday afternoon & as her blood count was high they only needed to do 1 session to get enough good cells to store.

Now Anouk is back at home until Monday next week for the MRI which is booked in for 4pm. We will then meet with the lead consultant...Stergios the Greek..to talk about the MRI & how things will proceed from there. In theory the 3rd cycle will start that night & we roll on, but we will have to see what the MRI shows.

Anouk has been on fantastic from during this period at home & if it wasn't for a tube in her nose & a lack of hair you wouldn't think there was anything wrong. She is eating more & more mashed up food which is great & has been vomitting less. She has been taking anti sickness drugs as we are trying to get as much liquid food into her a s possible. She has now moved to 1.5 calories per ml feed which means less time on the pump per day & she has been putting on weight as well.

It does look like that we will be in Hospital for Christmas...ho ho ho!

Currently I'm away for the week but we will all be together for the weekend. So it's not the ideal scenario & we are all getting a little anxious about the MRI scan.