Hospital Visit 4 Play by Play – day 3 through Discharge – It’s a Wrap

Day 3 Starts Thursday 6:30 am.
Reminder: her 8:45 pm methotrexate blood level is 5.86.
7ish: Few diaper changes. Doc comes by to check on her – Lenox grumpy and grunty. Doc Says she will see us in the morning tomorrow so looks like no discharge planned for today.
10:30 am – Lenox and Liz sleep until almost 10. Lenox up changed, brush her teeth, and she eats a little breakfast. Is watching Grease.
Lazy chill day mostly – no nap for Lenox but lots of movies.
Great friend drops us off Torchys Tacos for lunch and a fun art project for Lenox- thanks Kate!
2:30: take 2nd blood draw but as pushing through the last bit of saline Lenox throws up on herself and Liz. Have to cover her port to give her a bath. While in the bath we give the first leukovorin (42 hours from when chemo first started). Get her bathed, dressed and nursing student changes all the bedding. Liz showers too.
We give her another bit of zofran with juice this time to avoid the saline.

Around 7 pm we get our 2:30 blood results back – she is at 0.28 and we have to be at 0.20 or lower. Close but no cigar! They will do her 2nd leukovorin at 8:30 pm (48 hrs from chemo start). They will do blood draw again in the morning and said we can hopefully do an early discharge (meaning probably before noon). Sweet!
Just ordered East Side Pies for dinner.

Similar to night before, We are up until about midnight for meds, etc.
3:00 am: vitals and diaper change.
3:30: air in line – get nurse, she fixes.
4:00: Lenox’s bum hurting and itching – change the paste she has on her bum.
4:30: they come in to do her blood draw and do IV Zofran. She gets upset, has a lollipop but almost throws up again. Back to sleep again.
8:30 am: I wake up and check with nurse. Our new methotrexate level from this morning’s draw is 0.06! Yeah. She says doc is on way to do discharge visit.
Doc comes to check in on us, says we are good to go. We pack up the room and Liz starts packing a cart to go to the car. Nurse brings actual discharge papers.
Now for the tough part – getting Lenox deaccessed from her port. Nurse is patient and we very slowly remove the window covering her butterfly and then the nurse pulls out the butterfly. A few tears but after tears she says it didn’t hurt really. Another successful visit! Her counts look good upon discharge so Halloween and Trick-or-treating hopefully a go! Yeah! As we leave, she walks out on her own. We stroll through 4 North slowly and she chats and smiles with the nurses giggling and talking about her Halloween costume. We all have smiles as we leave the hospital at 10:40 am Friday. 4th Visit Done!