From Monica, Maddies aunt: Hi All- I have an update on Maddie. She had a good day yesterday, slept most of the day but unfortunately, that means JP was up with her most of the night last night. So he left this morning to get some sleep at the nearby room/house the hospital has provided for them. We do have a correction regarding what treatment she is actually receiving. Erica had thought that she would be getting the max dose on the first day and then smaller and smaller doses of the radiation over the next several days, but that was incorrect. Maddie got one blast of radiation the first day and that was all the radiation she will receive for now. She is still in the lead room because the radiation is now working through her body and she is still too radioactive to be out in public. So while she is in the lead room, they are giving her chemo. Her radioactive levels do decrease significantly at first but Debbie told me today that it could be up to 2 weeks after she leaves the hospital that she will be at a level where Debbie can actually be in her presence. So Debbie will have to leave home when Maddie leaves the hospital and she will need to stay gone until the drs give her the ok to come back. In the meantime, she could really go into labor any day now. And she told me that she would actually rather go into labor now while this is going on. There is a good chance that the bone marrow transplant will take place pretty quickly after this treatment, which I believe will be 6 weeks in the hospital for Maddie and her caretaker(s) (most likely JP + other family members). It sounds like JP and the crew at the hospital have been able to spend more time in the room with Maddie than we had originally been told. As long as their levels do not get too high - I think Erica said max 200-300, and JP has been the highest at 12. Erica told me that the mood is good at the hospital. There is a lot of joking and nice times together. It sounds to me like they are making the best of the situation. My brother is really good at doing that. Love to you all!
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 21:43:46 +0000