Last week Thursday Saskia had to have her bloods checked and it showed that there was not much substance to it. A blood and platelet transfusion was organised for Friday 25 October, but she developed a fever on the Thursday evening, so back to hospital it was. The usual procedure is that you need to be fever-free for 48 hours and on antibiotics for at least an additional 24 hours. Luckily we managed to bring the fever down quite quickly and were able to go home on Saturday afternoon with a bag full of drugs.
The real issue with the chemo treatment is not that you feel very sick during the actual administering, but the ability to fight any infection is reduced to nearly nothing in the 10-14 days following the treatment.
To have a fever does not sound as bad, but for persons being treated for cancer, it is actually pretty bad news and if not treated immediately can potentially have a deadly result. Healthy persons get infected all the time without the person actually knowing it. The body's immune system is usually taking care of all that without noticeable signs. But when your body has received a large amount of poison, the ability for the body to make healthy blood (through the bone-marrow) is next to nothing. This means that any infection, no matter how small, cannot be fought, which causes a fever and back to hospital for treatment it is.
But this week was an awesome week for Saskia. Yesterday (Wednesday) she managed to go a whole day to school and did one-and-a-half hours of calisthenics. She felt absolutely great. Today she is back in hospital for some further blood checks, but it seems that her body has produced the healthy blood stuff, so we do not believe that there is any need for additional transfusions.
Tonight we'll all dress-up for trick-or-treating and I am sure Saskia and her siblings will have a ball of a time.
Next week wednesday she will have a PET scan (which was postponed last time), followed by a 5-day intensive chemo treatment. With this treatment, she has to stay in hospital as the chemo need to be administered with 24hrs per day of liquids as well.
Please do keep Saskia and us in your prayers.
Saskia's Journey with Cancer
Thursday 31 October 2013
Tuesday 22 October 2013
Moving on ... Feeling Blessed
Saskia started her second round of chemo last week Monday (14 October). She had to be in hospital every day for 5 days. Each day was a long day, leaving our home at 7am and only back by about 4pm. She had to be on fluids for 2 hours before the chemo session of one-and-a-half hours, followed by another two hours of fluids. Although she felt very nausea throughout the week, she managed to go home every day, which was fantastic! Even though she could hardly bear the thought of food, she actually managed to eat and drink every day.
Meanwhile she has decided that she is better off without hair. She woke up every morning with large plugs of hair just scattered around her bed and pillow which made her realise every time that she was ill. Better to have it off! her little brother Arjen of 8 years said without hesitation that he wanted to do the same, so his hair went off as well. Marcel her older brother of 15 could obviously not stay behind and decided together with our friend Luke Jones to go bald as well. Grandpa and myself had done it already a little earlier. Saskia had great fun shaving all these heads.
At the end of her chemo session last week, the weather was so good and Saskia felt really fantastic, so we organised a big bonfire for last Saturday. It was great to see all of our kids enjoy themselves so much with each other and their friends. It is moments like these that make us feel blessed and humbled by all that is happening. It is in moments like these that we feel comforted by Christ and His promise, and it is these type of moments that we will have to look back upon and remember in times of difficulty, which we know will surely come as well.
Little Sebastian, Saskia's miniature pony has received some company. We are now the proud owners of two little sheep as well. These sheep were donated by the home-groups of our church (Trinity Mount Barker). They are approximately 4-5 months old and are very tame. They came from the Hahndorf Farnbarn and have been bottle-fed for all of their short lives. We still bottle-feed them for a little longer, although this is not really needed, but it is great fun for the kids. Our youngest daughter Pyrene had the honour of naming them and now we have "Shaun" and "Fluffy". We had to promise that we do not eat them over Christmas....
Meanwhile Saskia is feeling relative good, still easily tired and she sleeps like a log, but at least she is home, strengthening herself for the next round in approximately two weeks.
Meanwhile she has decided that she is better off without hair. She woke up every morning with large plugs of hair just scattered around her bed and pillow which made her realise every time that she was ill. Better to have it off! her little brother Arjen of 8 years said without hesitation that he wanted to do the same, so his hair went off as well. Marcel her older brother of 15 could obviously not stay behind and decided together with our friend Luke Jones to go bald as well. Grandpa and myself had done it already a little earlier. Saskia had great fun shaving all these heads.
At the end of her chemo session last week, the weather was so good and Saskia felt really fantastic, so we organised a big bonfire for last Saturday. It was great to see all of our kids enjoy themselves so much with each other and their friends. It is moments like these that make us feel blessed and humbled by all that is happening. It is in moments like these that we feel comforted by Christ and His promise, and it is these type of moments that we will have to look back upon and remember in times of difficulty, which we know will surely come as well.
Little Sebastian, Saskia's miniature pony has received some company. We are now the proud owners of two little sheep as well. These sheep were donated by the home-groups of our church (Trinity Mount Barker). They are approximately 4-5 months old and are very tame. They came from the Hahndorf Farnbarn and have been bottle-fed for all of their short lives. We still bottle-feed them for a little longer, although this is not really needed, but it is great fun for the kids. Our youngest daughter Pyrene had the honour of naming them and now we have "Shaun" and "Fluffy". We had to promise that we do not eat them over Christmas....Meanwhile Saskia is feeling relative good, still easily tired and she sleeps like a log, but at least she is home, strengthening herself for the next round in approximately two weeks.
Wednesday 9 October 2013
A body in pain
Since last post, Saskia has hardly been out of hospital. After she was finally able to get home, she was so weak and couldn't fight a simple infection as a common cold. Monday 30 September she was admited again into hospital with a high fever. Although the fever went down gradually, the oxygen levels in her blood were very low, so she had to be frequently on aditional oxygen supply. For Saskia there was nothing worse which could happen to her: being confined to a small hospital room during the school holidays. And although we can try to entertain her with movies, games, books, karaoke, etc, if you're not allowed to leave the hospital, everything just looks grim. But we are so proud of her as she was never realy too upset for too long. She always managed to pick herself up and do something to entertain herself.
Last monday (7 October) we got the good news that she was all clear to go home, but......there was still the stemcell harvesting to be done. The 7th chemo treatment will be a treatment targeting her bonemarrow and as a result will wipe it out. Without bone marrow, the body is unable to make blood. In order to overcome this, doctors can now extract so-called stem cells from the blood, keep it in the fridge and re-inject it when the body needs it. The best time to take these stem cells, is from blood which is newly created by the bone marrow, which is usually 2 weeks after the initial chemo treatment.
Saskia was allowed home on Monday and had to be back on Tuesday early morning for an operation to receive another line. The portline which she has is not large enough to extract blood in a continuous flow and as such a line is inserted in one of the larger veins in her right leg. The lines are then connected to this hi-tech centrifugal machine. The blood now flows through this machine, the stemcells are being extracted and the rest of the blood is pumped back into the body. This procedure took about 4 hours and with a little bit of luck, there are sufficient quantities of stem cells extracted so that Saskia does not have to do it again today.
This all sounds realy simple and relative easy, were it not that our own child is actually connected to three or four machines, with tubes, wires and electrodes connected to every part of her young body, with tears in her eyes and crying that it all hurts so much. It is one of the most devastating scenes which we can face as parents and one that we cannot prepare for. We can talk about physical and emotional pain, we can try to prepare for how we will react to it and we can try to find meaning in it. But when it actually happens it exceeds all expectation and any form of preparation falls short. It is heartwrenching to see your own child being so sick, going through so many painful procedures, hooked up to so many machines and getting a drugstore full of prescription drugs. There is something so wrong with this scenario. And there are no answers. Even the bible falls short of a direct answer. God never gave Job an answer as to why he had to suffer and even Jesus cried out on the cross "Why have you forsaken me?". How can we keep faith if even God's own son struggled with the same question as we do? It is because of that: even God's own son struggled with the same question as we do. Although all this pain does not make sense, faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse. We know that one day, it will all make sense. And that is what we as a family hold on to.
Last monday (7 October) we got the good news that she was all clear to go home, but......there was still the stemcell harvesting to be done. The 7th chemo treatment will be a treatment targeting her bonemarrow and as a result will wipe it out. Without bone marrow, the body is unable to make blood. In order to overcome this, doctors can now extract so-called stem cells from the blood, keep it in the fridge and re-inject it when the body needs it. The best time to take these stem cells, is from blood which is newly created by the bone marrow, which is usually 2 weeks after the initial chemo treatment.
Saskia was allowed home on Monday and had to be back on Tuesday early morning for an operation to receive another line. The portline which she has is not large enough to extract blood in a continuous flow and as such a line is inserted in one of the larger veins in her right leg. The lines are then connected to this hi-tech centrifugal machine. The blood now flows through this machine, the stemcells are being extracted and the rest of the blood is pumped back into the body. This procedure took about 4 hours and with a little bit of luck, there are sufficient quantities of stem cells extracted so that Saskia does not have to do it again today.
This all sounds realy simple and relative easy, were it not that our own child is actually connected to three or four machines, with tubes, wires and electrodes connected to every part of her young body, with tears in her eyes and crying that it all hurts so much. It is one of the most devastating scenes which we can face as parents and one that we cannot prepare for. We can talk about physical and emotional pain, we can try to prepare for how we will react to it and we can try to find meaning in it. But when it actually happens it exceeds all expectation and any form of preparation falls short. It is heartwrenching to see your own child being so sick, going through so many painful procedures, hooked up to so many machines and getting a drugstore full of prescription drugs. There is something so wrong with this scenario. And there are no answers. Even the bible falls short of a direct answer. God never gave Job an answer as to why he had to suffer and even Jesus cried out on the cross "Why have you forsaken me?". How can we keep faith if even God's own son struggled with the same question as we do? It is because of that: even God's own son struggled with the same question as we do. Although all this pain does not make sense, faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse. We know that one day, it will all make sense. And that is what we as a family hold on to.
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