It never ends

Well, on the positive side, Maggie's demeanor is improving. She is beginning to talk again and has gained some appetite interest again. She managed, for the most part, to keep her food down, except for a spit-up during her nap. Yesterday Maggie did really well until the evening and then ended up vomiting 2 times at Andy's brother's house, and then started her diarrhea once again to total 6 episodes yesterday.

Now to the not-so-positive-side. I called the nurse today hoping that they would want to see Maggie because her potassium could be low, due to all the excretions. She also had such a rough week with all of the side effects to the chemo and steroids that we wanted her to be looked at to make sure she was okay. However, we were denied a visit to the clinic saying that we should wait until the end of the week if Maggie's diarrhea persisted. We learned that many of her side effects were caused by the Vincristine chemo, which makes us think that she is receiving too much. Her fine motor skills were affected, she has fallen twice when she tries to crawl, she had stomach pain, jaw pain, she couldn't keep her head up, she was listless, slept much of the time, and when she wasn't sleeping she was crying constantly. Maggie is now hoarse as well and has a bit of a cough, which I thought was a symptom, but the nurse said today it was most likely from 3 days of crying. Supposedly Maggie's vomiting and nausea is not from the Vincristine, but instead from the steroids--perhaps a reflux problem. Whatever the cause, this last week was one of the worst weeks we've experienced in a long time. It cannot continue like this each month.

And now, Maggie is having rapid-fire diarrhea. She has had over 13 episodes today and I am sure we will experience much more tonight. I have decided regardless of what the nurse says tomorrow, we will be visiting the clinic to get Maggie looked at. There is absolutely no reason why she should be experiencing diarrhea or any of the other remaining side effects like she is.

And to make things even better, we scheduled our second opinion with Cincinnati Children's GI doctors today and the soonest they could get us in is October 30. So, we must go another month and a half constantly worrying about whether Maggie's electrolytes are okay. And, the poor thing will continue to eat, but not gain any strength or weight from her food because it leaves her body too quickly for it to absorb the nutrients. It's just this horrible unending cycle. Who said that Maintenance was going to be easier? Andy commented tonight that Maggie's side effects are worse now than they were when she was getting high dose chemo. We realize that fighting cancer wasn't going to be easy, but this is a bit more than we expected.

Please pray for dear Maggie, that her diarrhea will at least subside a bit, that we might get some answers to how to deal with it soon, and that she will fully recover from all the toxins that are being put into her body.