Back in the Hospital & Amelia’s Birthday!

Short version is that it’s Amelia’s 5th birthday and Havyn is back in the hospital.

The day started off with Havyn at chemo. She did well and counts were good. In general she’s been acting a bit out of her normal, though. Mostly she’s just been extra-anxious about things.

After she got home she was super cranky. That’s a bit normal for chemo days, but it seemed worse. We took her temperature- we typically check with an ear thermometer and if reads high we check it under her arm. She was 101 in her ear but normal under her arm. Anything over 100.4 and we need to head to the hospital. Risk of infection in her line is nothing to mess around with. Since her under-arm temp was fine we pressed on with our plans. As we were preparing to head out for Amelia’s birthday dinner we checked her temp again. 102.3 in her ear. 101.4 under her arm.

A few minutes later I (Steve) was in the car with Havyn heading downtown. Tammy went on with the rest of the family and met some friends at El Capporal (yum!) to celebrate with Amelia. (See Tammy’s Facebook live stream of some of the event.)

We fought rush hour traffic and avoided speeding tickets. Havyn moaned the whole time. She couldn’t keep her eyes open. With her eyes half shut, her right eye (the one with the tumor) would roll sideways while the other would look straight ahead. I started imagining the worst. Every 10 seconds or so I’d ask her to open her eyes. She’d open them, look around, and ask if she could close them again.

By the time we got into the E.R., Havyn’s fever was gone (praise God) but she was inconsolable. Crying, screaming, nervous. They checked all of her vitals and prepared to access her port. They were going to put lidocaine cream on it for 30 minutes to numb it. I asked them to just access the port without the numbing cream so they could start the blood tests quickly. I’m so sorry sweet girl.

They stuck her with that big needle but somehow missed. They couldn’t get the fluid in or any blood out. So they had to undo it and they brought in another nurse. He stuck her again and this time it worked. This girl has been poked so much today and she’s so dang tough!

Havyn is doing great now. Honestly she’s doing perfectly. Smiling. Talking. Joking. We just got up to 7West where she’ll stay the rest of her time. They have a play room here. It’s all she’s been talking (and begging) about since we got down here. So things are looking up.

All of her initial blood labs came back good. They have to let some cultures grow for a while – at least 24 hours. So Havyn will spend tonight and tomorrow here, hooked up to some antibiotics.

Thanks for praying. We’ll update more when we know when she’ll go home.

And Christina – thanks so much for dropping in. You are incredibly kind and an inspiration to us. We will continue to pray for you.