Day 3 of Chemo

Avarie started chemotherapy about 3 hours after her surgery on Wednesday. I hated watching them bring in the drugs and watch them put them into her IV knowing it was chemotherapy. It is such a mixed feeling. Yes I want you to save my daughters life, but every mommy instinct in me wanted to yell "No I won't let you poison my baby", that is what it felt like, like someone was poisoning my child and I was sitting there letting them. I know she has to have it to save her life, but that surprisingly only makes it a little easier. Every instinct is to protect your child, and chemo is poison. It goes into your body and starts killing bad and good things.
I was expecting chemotherapy to be different then what it has turned out to be. I thought it was a big bag of poison, and I pictured it white for some reason, and I pictured then hooking her up and it dripping into her, and then within and hour or so, I pictured her getting really sick. Thats not what chemotherapy is at all. Chemotherapy is actually two words, Chemo is the bad stuff, the stuff that will make her sick and lower her immune system, the therapy part is the other drugs she takes to help fight off the cancer also, like the steroids. She takes the steroids every morning and night, but the chemo she will only receive about once a week. She will come in every Wednesday for her chemo. Different weeks call for different chemo drugs. It is made up of alot of drugs not just one. And so far there has been no bag of white fluid dripping into her veins, like I pictured in my mind.
The best part of all of this is, so far she has not gotten sick at all. She is tolerating the chemotherapy pretty well. The worst part so far is the intense mood swings caused by the steroids. And supposedly this is going to get a whole lot worse. Honestly, I can't imagine it getting worse, I am already barely hanging in there with her insane grumpiness. Part of that I know is not from the steroids, but from the fact that she has been through a lot in the last week, let alone the last several months that her body has been being taken over by this disease. And then since we have been here she has been poked, and proded, cut into, had bone removed, had spinal fluid removed, she has wires coming from all parts of her body, way too many doctors coming in asking in her little mind way too many questions and every four hours around the clock nurses taking her vitals. There are many more little things she has gone through, but I think one of the hardest for her is the loss of any control she had over herself. She can't get out of bed if she wants to, because she can't walk, she has to depend on someone to lift her out and carry her everywhere. She has people telling her she has to take this medicine or hold still for this. I think she is emotionally shutting down. Everyday I have noticed it more and more. She is unwilling to make eye contact with anyone except me and her dad, she stares at anything she can and just completely acts as if the person isn't there. She does this even with people I know she would be excited to see. I talked with the social worker and the Dr's and Nurses about it, they all said that this is perfectly normal, its just hard to see.
Tomorrow she gets her next round of chemo. It is a shot that is given directly into the thigh muscle. I am not looking forward to that, I know she is going to be histerical. She has to stay for at least one more day after that treatment to make sure she does not have an allergic reaction to it and then she can go home. So it is looking like maybe we will go home on Sunday. That is the plan right now anyway. The only things that could hold that up are: a bad reaction to the shot, an infection or not getting her pain under more control. The pain issue has gotten better each day, but I was hoping and I think the Dr's were too that she would be a little better today.
I'm hopeful for tomorrow.
On an exciting note, I found out that Avarie gets to do a Make A Wish. So if she wants to, and I will help her know how much she wants to, she will get to go to Disneyland, or Disneyworld when she is feeling a little better. And not just her, our whole family will go all expenses paid. It is an amazing thing that they offer this for kids, because she is going to go through so much, our whole family will, it is wonderful that there will be something fun for them to look forward to.
So everyone reading this know that today we are ok. We made it through another day and are surviving. They have told me to try to be prepared that it is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. Its just hard to prepare for something that you can't even imagine. No one knows exactly how she will react to it all. so for today know that she is surviving, she is alive and to me that is all that matters. I told the nurse today, all that matters to me is that I have my daughter alive at the end of all of this. I know it will be hard for everyone, but I know we will survive the difficulty of it, with the help of our friends and family and most importantly the Lord. He has blessed us so much through all of this. I have had a couple of people say to me that they wish it wasn't me going through this, that I have had to go through enough over the years, but I ask all of you to think of it this way; Yes I have been through a lot, but that was just testing ground for the greater challenges in my life. It was preparing me for this. What if I hadn't gone through some of the tough things I have had to face, then maybe I wouldn't be as strong as I am now, perhaps I wouldn't truly know that the Lord really does only give us what we can handle and so to do so he had to prepare me to handle more. Now keep in mind I am having an ok day today, in a week or so I may be having a difficult time and I may need this reminder of this from all of you. But I know that the Lord loves me and my daughter very much, and I know that he has a lot of faith in me to trust me to get through this. I do wish my sweet baby could be saved from the pain she has to face, but she is so strong, she will survive this and will hopefuly touch many lives around her.