Greetings from the McClendon house this lovely fall evening. Of course, here in Alabama it doesn’t feel like fall yet – but that’s pretty normal. We had a pretty successful day overall, especially for a Monday!
Both Grace and Cole were back at school and Tim was back at work. Kayleigh and I stayed home where she enjoyed just being home and relaxing. I spent the day cleaning and sanitizing my kitchen. Even though Kayleigh’s numbers are not expected to drop drastically I decided it would still be a good idea to give everything a good scrubbing and some disinfecting just to be safe. Hopefully by the time I return to work next week my house will be in order.
Kayleigh had a pretty good day. She did not have any headaches which is a huge blessing. Her stomach did hurt all day which is so difficult to watch. Every time she eats I pray her stomach will be ok, but every time it hurts within just a few moments of the first bite. We have also noticed that antibiotics really aggregate the stomach situation. Unfortunately, kids on the steroids and chemo have a very specific immune system suppression that makes them particularly susceptible to a certain strain of pneumonia. Because of that she is on a precautionary antibiotic three days a week. As you can imagine, those three days are particularly bad on her little tummy. Really the 4th day isn’t much better either. That means 4 out of 7 days she hurts badly.
Obviously we still want to protect Kayleigh from the pneumonia so the antibiotics are important. However, her oncologist has told us about another option, it’s an IV antibiotic but it only has to be administered once a month. There are some concerns that this medicine might not be as good as the oral ones but at this point we feel it is worth at least trying. If we can do anything to help Kayleigh’s quality of life go up it is worth it!
So, tomorrow we will be going to the Huntsville affiliate office for labs and the antibiotic infusion. We would appreciate your prayers that these meds will work just as well for Kayleigh as the oral ones and that she will get some relief in her tummy. Please keep praying we can continue decreasing the steroids without side effects. Pray for this tumor to continue to get better a little more each day.
Thank you for continuing to stand with us.
Until tomorrow,
‘Carrow 💜
