Dainty Warrior: Round 3 Wrap Up

In the morning we arrived a little earlier than the last 2 times for Ania's exam and chemotherapy treatment. There was initially some doubt that her treatment would take place because in the last 24 hours she had a fever, cough and beginnings of a cold. The anesthesiologist decided to ultimately move forward considering this was no ordinary procedure but more of a life saving one and considering it was due to time of year (cold and flu season), it was best to proceed. I was thankful because I was mentally prepared for today to be one more treatment crossed off our long list.

She was given Versed (narcotic to relax) again which is always...fun... She hates the taste and tries to spit it out but man that stuff relaxes and brings out the comedian in her. I drew her a picture of a bumble bee while we were waiting to go back to surgery. After I drew flowers around the bumble bee, she would sniff them and tell us what the flowers smelled like. Her answers had us in stitches! There were hot dog, peanut butter and jelly, blueberry and pizza scented flowers! Haha!

Stop and smell the uh... hot dog scented flowers little bumble bee ;)

She went back for her exam and we went to breakfast and the waiting room for about an hour. Dr. Shapiro finished his exam and gave us his update. Basically, the big tumor is no longer a big mass but appears more "wispy". That is good. It is continuing to shrink. She does have still a lot of vitreous seeds ( basically mini tumors) that are floating around and they must be addressed at some point. Since they are floating around, it makes sense why some days her vision seems better than other days from that eye. The large tumor is out of her central vision but the seeds are not- therefore continuing to block some of that vision. The doctor is considering doing a cocktail chemo drug of both Malphalan (what she's been getting thus far) and introducing Topotecan which may help destroy some of those seeds. We will learn more in the next few weeks of his plan.

She was given prednisone and Benedryl ahead of her chemotherapy treatment in hopes of avoiding the iodine allergic reaction that made last round so unexpectedly difficult. It seems to have worked as there was no complications this time and the Malphalan was administered successfully. Phew!

We waited for her to come to recovery room. It's always so good to see her in there, breathing and relaxed! She was pretty drowsy and didn't want to wake up but we were transferred to our room for the night anyways. She is required to lay flat for 8 hours after her procedure and today she slept through pretty much ALL 8 hours! She also had a little nausea/vomiting and 101.9 fever at one point but returned to normal once hour 8 rolled around.

Pretty much what she looked like all afternoon.....

I got to snuggle and nap a little too :)

After her 8 hours of naptime came to a close, she was ready and able to get up. We explored the floor and playroom of course- this time her Mimi got to stay the night and play too!