Day -8

Today was Tessa's second day of chemo, and thankfully still no side effects. They do significant testing of Tessa's blood (day one of chemo was marked by blood draws every 15 minutes) to monitor the levels of the busulfan (chemo) in order to make sure she is getting the right dose. Tonight they increased her dose, so who knows how she'll be feeling tomorrow. They are pumping her full of IV fluids, plus she's drinking like a fish. As a result she's peeing constantly. Seriously. She's averaging like 5-6 times an hour. This is no small feat. First you have to open the door to the bathroom, make sure the hat is in the toilet (a plastic cup that fits in the toilet bowl to catch and measure her urine). Then you lower the side of the bed, she climbs out, and carefully making sure all of her IV lines (at least 2 at any given time) don't get tangled we walk and wheel the huge IV pole with all it's machines and bags of medicine to the bathroom. I then have to lift her onto and off of the toilet as it's quite tall. We then repeat the trip back to bed, climb in and plug all the machines back in. THEN... I return to the bathroom where I make note of how much urine we collected, empty it, and jot down the quantity on the white board chart on the door. Yup. My favorite is when we go through this process every 5-10 minutes. This is how we pass a good deal of our time here at the Stanford Four Seasons. Jealous yet?

All kidding aside, things have gone better than we could have hoped so far. Tessa is still feeling good, and there are lots of visitors and gifts that serve as distractions (THANK YOU so much to the amazing women who put together the 25 days of Christmas as Tessa is opening those gifts now). This morning her Uncle Mattie came to visit. She just thinks the sun rises and sets with my brother. He's pretty fabulous with her. He made the babies talk as often as she wanted and showed her how to make origami paper cranes. Turns out she loved that! She didn't even stop for a snack and put off lunch so they could finish making all the little red papers into cranes.

She had a total blast and was sad to see her uncle go...

After nap time Tessa got a visit from her new friend, Michelle. Michelle is a Child Life Specialist, someone who helps the kids adapt to the hospital, plays with them and brings crafts, games and toys to brighten their day. We haven't been too impressed with this service in the past, but Michelle showed up with a new baby doll for Tessa and stayed to make the babies talk. Tessa was thrilled, and so Casey and I naturally loved her new friend.

After Casey headed home to cook me some food for tomorrow and do our laundry (what a good husband!) Tessa and I snuggled down and watched Cinderella II. She is now happily snoozing away beside me and I am eager to join her. 

Thank you to everyone for their emails and messages. Makes me feel a little more connected to the outside world!