Lexi update X2

For those of you who have been following Lexi, here is the last two updates:

Thursday, December 17, 2009 4:54 PM, EST

Hello! I want to let everyone know that we were able to bring Alexis home on Tuesday late afternoon. That evening, I went to the grocery store for the special "low fat high calorie diet". That was quite an interesting trip. Bascially, Alexis will be eating lots and lots of sugar for a while! Alexis is feeling better each day and has been eating. However, she is still having nausea and vomits once or twice each day. This has made it tough to put some pounds on her! Today, when Scot and Aaron took Alexis to her physical and lab appointment

, she had lost .5 lbs. That does not seem like a lot but when you weigh 34 lbs it is. Our nurse practitioner Faye was very concerned. She said that Alexis can not lose anyone weight. If she does then she will have to be admitted to the hospital for a week to have TPN (Complete nutrition through a tube). We have until Monday to increase her wieght and hopefully we can. If she does have to be put on TPN, I worry about whether her body will tolerate TPN better than the tube feedings. That obviously did not go well. The mouth sores from this round of chemo will probably start this weekend, so hopefully the special mouthwash will help her be able to eat.

Today we received some gifts from Alexis's school that said they were from Santa's elves. Alexis said to me "do you think these really are from Santa's elves? Then she asked her dad something similar. She was so excited at the thought of this. It truly made her day. Thank you so much Santa's Elves!

Well I need to get some things done. Take care.

Love,
Jen

Tuesday, December 22, 2009 7:46 AM, EST

Hi. I just want to give everyone a quick update. The past several weeks have definitely been our most challenging.

On Friday when Alexis went in for her clinic appointment, the nurse practitioner was very concerned about her weight. Alexis had still not went back to eating normally and this was the longest it has taken after chemo. The nurse stated that if she loss anymore weight they may have to admit her! So our goal was to put as many pounds on over the weekend as possible. Unfortunantly, that backfired. Alexis was worse Saturday and Sunday then she was the rest of the week. She laid on the couch, slept most of the time and vomited everytime we gave her the octreotide.

On Monday, like we had expected, Alexis lost another half a pound of so. After much debate between surgery and oncology, they decided to take her off the low fat diet with the exception of eating fast food and keep her on Octrotide. They also increased the Zofran again. We thought we were good as gold with being able to leave until she spiked a fever. At that point, they decided to admit her and at that point I was actually releived. In the state that she has been in I didn't really know if I felt comfortable taking her home despite the fact it would be much easier having her home this particular week. I myself are prepared for whatever happens! We will just have to wait and see. There is a chance they will let us go home for Christmas day. right now she is not on TPN but she is having the mouthsores.

Well I have to go. Take Care.

Love,
Jen

Please send prayers to Lexi and her family.


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