Day +131: Chemo Returns First

Sarah has been in the hospital one night and one day now. The stress for Susan and me is pretty intense.

Sarah is exhibiting low oxygen saturation levels similar to what she did during the bone marrow transplant. Her doctors found some fluid in her lungs from an x-ray this afternoon. We are trying not to freak out about this. It could be another case of pneumonia like we saw during Sarah's BMT. Sarah's doctors are working to get a handle on this.

Both Susan and I are going to be staying with Sarah at the hospital tonight. The other children are at home being watched by a close friend of the family. They are going to be coming back to Dartmouth to see Sarah everyday for the time being.

The chemo hasn't caused a great deal of suffering for Sarah yet. She has experienced some nausea and the steroids are starting to effect her behavior. Like I said, not bad yet. She had intrathecal chemo treatment today around 11:00am.

Sarah's primary oncologist gave us some more specifics regarding her treatment plan to get her into remission. They had been having trouble tracking down the Dasatinib Sarah needs, but managed to find some in California. She will begin the Dasatinib treatment Friday and continue chemotherapy in the meantime. They are checking her blood counts twice a day to detect increases/decreases in blood counts and determine if the treatment is moving her towards remission. Sarah's doctor said they'd could use apheresis to remove some of the white blood cells to buy some time giving the Dasatinib a chance to work. Apheresis is a process used to harvest different types of blood cells for uses like bone marrow transplants (oddly enough).

Please keep Sarah in your prayers over the next few days. She is a good little girl and we want her to grow up to be a good woman.

-Ben