Feb. 22

Today begins a halfway normal life again.

Kelsey came home on Sunday night after spending Thursday and Friday at Tricia and Shannon's house and then the weekend with dad and spending the previous two weeks at Aunt Marie's house - she's able to be back home with us and sleeping in her own bed again. I think she's had fun hanging with Aunt Marie, cousin Beth, Miss Deanna, Carol, Grandma, Dad and the Conrads, but it was good to be home again. :) Thanks to everyone who has helped...been a crazy month for sure!

Megan layed in bed all morning but really felt pretty good. No major issues. She watched 30 minutes of TV while I went to get Kelsey's medicine. She actually wanted 2 small quesadillas for breakfast...hey as long as it's food, it works for me! Yesterday all she ate was 2 of those frozen qusadillas and a cookie.

We went to the cancer center today to get a check-up and get blood taken for tests. Megan is still taking these darn steroids to lower the swelling in her brain, which ultimately makes so many things feel better, but it also has a lot of side affects. We had a list of questions for the doctor. Of course he added 2 more medications to the 13 she already has... She has a rash on her neck and behind her ear into her head - from steroids he says. Her legs and hips and butt hurt - he says steroids can cause muscle and bone pain. Her stomach hurts terribly - still from the acid build up from the steroids. She's also having a hard time sleeping from them too. I gave her sleeping pills and benedryl before bed the last 2 nights and she still only slept 3 hours last night and the night before. No fun. She just lays there in the dark. I asked her what she thinks about all the time as she's been laying in bed in the dark and quiet for the last 3 weeks and she said mostly camp. Thinking about all the cool things she's done over the years, what units she's been in, and what she'll do this year. She's signed up for one week at Camp Rainbow, a free camp for kids with Cancer, 2 weeks at Girl Scout horsback riding camp at Cedarledge with Shelby and then 1 week at Girl Scout Let's Get Cooking camp at Tuckaho with Shelby. She wants to do a Wolf camp with Shelby too. Not able to camp with Katie again this year. :(

She's had tingling in her feet for most of her hospital stay. Now it's tingly in her left leg, hands and face. Oncologist isn't sure why...he wanted us to see the neurologist next week but now he wants us to call on Thursday and if it's not better wants us to get in to see him this week. Another wait and see....

We did get an appointment to see the endocrinologist on Friday. There really isn't any other pediatric dr. who deals with kids with thyroid cancer in St. Louis. She will do all the follow-up on tracking her thyroid levels, medications and such in the future. I guess I'm going to schedule the radioactive iodine treatment tomorrow. The oncologist doesn't want to wait - she needs to have it done on the 6-week post-surgery schedule, but we had to get in to see this new dr. That means she starts the low-iodine diet within the next week. I've been reading online about it - not much fun. All foods need to be 5 g of iodine or less per serving. (Salt is 400 g for 1 tsp). No dairy, eggs, commercial bread, anything from the sea, only 5 oz of fresh meat (no turkey) a day, 4 servings of very few carbohydrates, no iodized salt...so many weird restrictions. All pure and plain, nothing from restaurants. They do have a cookbook online so I guess I'll be baking bread, making homemade waffles and such. I think I'll be making a trip down to Valenti's meat market. :)

After the dr's visit she felt pretty decent. She watched a couple hours of tv tonight, looked on the computer and Keri brought her 3 new teen magazines (along with a fabulous dinner) and she was super excited. She actually ate the dinner that was brought to us tonight and wanted more mashed potatoes at 10 pm and then a cookie from last nights dinner and the pie from tonight too! I guess since she's lost 35 pounds I won't mind the little extra dessert intake! :0)