Mommy: The first day of chemo

This was by far the longest day of the week. Cambria first had to be given the "all clear" to start chemo before the lab would "cook it up". While we were waiting, one of Dr. Meany's nurses went over this HUGE binder of information. It had info on the hospital, the oncology department, the solid tumor team, neuroblastomas in general, childhood cancers in general, and a very detailed roadmap of her specific treatment plan. While she as going through this, we actually had a quick visit from a very sweet mom named Andrea. She's friends with Derek's cousin Ashley (the same wonderful lady who started up the youCaring account and helped set up this blog). Andrea's daughter was being treated at the same hospital (small world, eh?) and she was sweet enough to bring some gift cards to the coffeehouse at Children's, a little stuffed moose, and Cambria's first ever balloon. Such a surprise! Cambria was sleeping at that point, but later on the balloon was a BIG deal!

After the binder, and another hour or so of waiting, the lab was finally done "cooking up" her chemo, and they hooked her up (which took so little time with the port, it was kind of a rush). She had the first drug, the carbo, for 40 minutes followed by saline for 20 minutes to clear the line and make sure all the medicine got in. Next up she had 40 minutes of the eto, followed by another 20 minutes to clear the line. Then finally we got to the 2 hours of hydrating fluids. Cambria actually slept through the first two hours of treatment, and the start of the fluids (big YAY!)

 but she was starting to get very bored of this place by the time the second hour of fluids came around.... This is where the balloon came in. Cambria was SO EXCITED!!! She was in absolute awe, and grabbing at it, and petting it, and trying to eat it of course (don't worry, we washed it first... washing a mylar baloon was an "interesting" activity) Then she was all unhooked and we were free and clear to go home. Overall, we got there about 9am, and left about 4pm. It was a LONG DAY.

She handled the carbo/eto combo fairly well... she was feeling nauseous and threw up a bit that night, and it was early for her next dose of Zofran so we called the on-call oncologist who gave approval to get the meds early. PHWEW! Thankfully we still had enough from the partial prescription that we had gotten the night before, although I had to pour it into a shot glass for the syringe to be able to reach the stuff. Oh man, the zofran is apparently as much of a miracle drug for Cambria as it was for me during morning sickness... a couple of minutes after she got her drops, she cried for, ate AND kept down a whole bottle! SCORE!!!! Once she was no longer nauseous or hungry, she was back to being her happy little self once more:

While all of the sick and throwing up was going on, poor Derek was at the pharmacy, because they were having "issues" getting the rest of the prescription to us. Which, FYI: telling a parent whose infant is currently throwing up from the chemo they just had, that the anti-nausea medication won't be ready for a few hours because they haven't gotten around to going through the delivery yet MAY not go well for the pharmacists... but I'll let Derek tell that tale.