Thursday, September 11, 2008

A Big Day Friday Sept 12th







Tomorrow is a big day. Ashley has her big AFP blood test. They'll also check her white counts to see if she's safe to start school next week. Lastly they'll administer pentamadine. Its a med that will prevent a fatal lung infection if Ashley gets exposed to a specific cold virus. They'll need to access her port and flush it with heparin to prevent clotting. I guess that's what they have to do 1 time a month when your port is inside your chest still. So we've decided to not get her AFP results until Monday. It takes 24 hours to process them anyway. Besides, if its bad news... let us have one more good weekend first. So here is our current stage of treatment...

Monitoring phase. 1x a month we get blood work for AFP, 1x every 3 months we have a CT scan. Lastly, we must do Pentamadine for 3 months after chemo is over. If all are clear and normal this continues for 1 year. That is as far ahead as we can think of for now. Let us just make it to Christmas and not have a bad CT or AFP.

We hope her AFP is below 60 this Friday. That would feed the speculation that her AFP rise is due to Liver Regeneration and not a new tumor. If its above 60... I don't even want to think about it.
Here are some recent photo's. We'll post an update when we have news. Maybe tomorrow afternoon but we won't post AFP until Mon. - April
Photo's are of Whitney's 1st day of school last Mon. New island Tony built and Ashley putting the steth where it belongs.




3 comments:

Andrea said...

I will be thinking of you guys and sending positive thoughts tomorrow & throughout the weekend. May you get only good news. And thanks for the pictures. It's great to see the girls. Look at Whitney, all ready for school! :)
Andrea

Anonymous said...

It is such a relief to know you can relax a little this weekend. We'll be thinking of you next week (as we always do) and sending good thoughts your way. Sounds like the kitchen is coming along wonderfully - great! Sorry to hear about your back injury. Hope your recovery is OK. I loved seeing the photos of Tony tossing up the girls - what a beautiful sight!

Love, Kathy

Anonymous said...

Oh I hope the test comes back positively and Ashley is able to start school next week. I would LOVE to see her in class!

~Teacher Betsy