Let's just cut to the chase and the good news...Gabriella's 3 month scans were CLEAR!!!! Hearing this was music to our ears and we're once again celebrating (in exhaustion and with a bit of caution).
Tuesday was a long day starting off with an early waking time, picking up Adam from work, and heading to the hospital. It was the usual process that we know all too well. We ran into many familiar faces and everyone who knew G when she was in treatment was amazed at how well she looked and how much her hair had come in. The anesthesia process was a little different this time since G didn't have her port. She had to have the mask for her induction then an IV was placed while she was sleeping. Since Bridget was with us and couldn't go in the prep area, we had to divide and conquer. I took B and Adam took G. It's never easy to see your child put to sleep and it was hard not being there with G and Adam. Next time we'll plan better or we'll just have to start a babysitting service at Packard (hahah...a project for someone else to work on ;-)). It would be nice because there are days where the doctors need to see Gabriella for an appointment followed by a conversation she just doesn't need to hear. But we do our best.
We saw our favorite waiting area greeters, many of the post op nurses and some of the surgeons who all played an important part in G's treatment. They normally call us in once G starts to wake up but she was already awake. She wasn't happy in general but especially not about the IV. This is pretty common the few times she's had the gas to put her to sleep. While she was waking up, one of the surgeons came in and said to me, "We found something".... and the rest of what he said faded out because all the blood ran out of my whole body at that moment and I almost passed out. As I was trying to listen and not panic, I realized he was talking about something not cancer related. He said they found a "fibrin sheath" where the tip of the port sat for a year and wanted to make sure it wasn't plastic. Ugg, really? Surgeons. Great guy but when you are talking to a cancer parent, it would be best to lead with something like...."this isn't cancer related but.....". G had to wait a little while longer to make sure that this outline they found on the CT wasn't a foreign body and was safe to leave as is. After a little while longer, we finally got to leave and meet up with Adam and Bridget. We went to the Oncology unit to say hi to one of our favorite nurses (and an old classmate) Shelley. It was nice to see everyone being on the other side of treatment. We even got to drop off one of our starter packages to a family whose 4 year old daughter was just at the beginning of her fight.
It's been a long week and we are emotionally and physically exhausted. Our celebration was somewhat cut short from the call scheduling our next CT/MRI in September. Not a fun thing to think about since we just made it through this scan. Then of course, there are the side effects we have to watch for...secondary cancers, leukemia, possibility of infertility, bladder cancer... the list goes on...all at the cost of "curing" her. For now, we're enjoying every moment just being with our girls and loving life! I'm still pretty darn positive that Gabriella has beat this!!!!
We hope you can all make it help launch our foundation at the Team G Family Festival on July 7th and celebrate Gabriella's end of treatment! It's going to be a great celebration and a lot of fun!
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