BMT Day +21

Today's daily photo is brought to you by Ariauna's Uncle Josh who was 21 miles away from Ruidoso Downs, New Mexico. Thanks Uncle Yoshi....

WBC- 1.7               28 days in the hospital
Hemoglobin- 10.9    50 days away from home and the kids
Platelets- 23
ANC- 0.6
Weight- 52.14

Ariauna had a rough night last night. She started with a fever of 101.9 about 11:45 p.m. She was up every hour throwing up again and in between is still having diarrhea. At 1:00 a.m. her fever was 102.6, so they decided to turn the cooling blanket on again.  During rounds this morning they decided to add Benadryl every 6 hours to help with the nausea. They talked about trying to get a scope and biopsy of her stomach set up for Thursday. They want to watch it for another day or two and see if it does get better with the nausea medicines, if so they may cancel it but they want to have it scheduled just in case. They are still questioning GVHD because of the skin rash, throwing up and diarrhea. However, her throwing up and diarrhea is not as severe as it usually is with most stomach/bowel GVHD. They still want us to continue the steroid creams. Her counts are doing awesome still and the doctors are very excited and happy about them.  Ariauna's teacher tried to come in at 9:00 to do school, but no such luck. I explained our night and so she left and just let Ariauna keep sleeping. She slept quite a bit longer this morning because of our long night. I think I have mentioned before on the blog how Ariauna is normally not a crazy sleeper, but here in the hospital she is all over the place. Here is yet another picture of how she woke up this morning.

I now put all of the bed rails up during the night because I am so afraid of her falling out of bed in the middle of the night. In case you don't get this picture, she is completely turned around and her head is down at the foot of her bed with all her friends. Once she finally woke up this morning I actually called the nurses in to tape her up for her shower. I figured we might as well shower her before I put her creams on. After her shower, Occupational Therapy came in to work with her. She actually brought a puzzle with her and hid all the puzzle pieces around in the room. Ariauna had to find them all and then they sat at the table and put the puzzle together. Then they went on a walk to the play room, Ariauna was not feeling real well so they came right back. Poor Ariauna, I feel so bad that even when she does not feel good and feels like she is going to throw up they still get her up and out of bed. You can tell by this next picture, well kind of because most of her face is covered by her mask, that she is not very happy about being out on a walk.

Ariauna and I both laid down for a nap this afternoon. We laid down at 1:30 and I woke up about 3:30, Ariauna stayed asleep until 4:15 when Physical Therapy came in and woke her up. She was feeling a little bit better this afternoon to play with Niki. She had hidden a bunch of stickers in our room for Ariauna to find and then Niki stayed and played our personalized memory game with her.

 We did get a couple of packages today. The first one was from the Young Woman in our ward. They sent us a huge envelope full of stars. Most of them had little notes to Ariauna and myself. We spent hours looking at them all, reading them and then hanging them on our wall. Thank you to all the young woman, the sweet notes and messages brightened our day and as you can see, they definitely brightened our room!

We also got a really sweet package from the Mill's family. They sent us a Book of Mormon activity book, Black stickers that you can scrape to make them different colors, some adorable Halloween fake nails, a couple of really cute puppets, a really cute plaque with an adorable saying on it and a Milky Way! Thank you so much Mills for the package.

Today has been a really sad, tough day for Ariauna and I. Our dog at home "Taz" has been sick for a few days. My mom told me this morning when she was at the house that he had a potty accident in the house, which is not like him and that he seemed to be getting worse. Jerry and I had talked last night and said he had not eaten for a few days and so he was already planning on calling first thing this morning to get an appt to take him in. The first appt to get him in was at 5:00 tonight or not until Thurs. Jerry took the 5:00 appt. Jerry said a few days ago he had thrown up and it looked like there was a piece of plastic in it, like a wrapper from something. So we were not sure if he had gotten into something or what. It was a long day today waiting for the time for his appt to come around. Jerry had already told the kids if there was something really wrong and it was going to cost us a ton of money we may have to put him down because we can not afford a huge vet bill right now,  plus he is getting old so he may not even make it through a surgery. Jerry came home after work and got him and took him in. I texted Jerry at 5:30 and asked him if he knew anything yet and he said no they had just barely gotten him into a room. at 5:40 Jerry sent me a text and said Taz had passed away. He said that they had finally gotten him into a room, but the doc had not been in yet. He said Taz was kind of fussing so he picked him up and put him on the table in the vet room and Jerry was petting him. He said he moaned and groaned and Jerry looked at him and his lips were white. He lifted his head and it just flopped down. He opened the door and hollered for one of the nurses and said he thinks he had just died, and sure enough, they took him off and that was the last Jerry saw of him. So sad! The doc came in and told Jerry that there was some stool sample and that it was bloody so they assume he was bleeding from the inside out and that most likely he had probably gotten into some rat poisining or something. I feel so bad, and think we probably should have gotten him in sooner. This is not what our little family needs right now. We are already struggling and now to lose our little furry family member is not good either. I knew Austin was going to be upset as Taz was his Christmas present almost 10 years ago. When I told Ariauna, she just lost it and we both cried and cried. She just kept saying that she wanted Taz to be there when she gets home. It broke my heart. Our nurse brought in this really cute small pink blanket and told Ariauna she could snuggle up to it and so that is exactly what she did and she just sat and cried and cried. I am worried about the kids at home and I do not look forward to going home to an empty house without our family puppy!

I did convince Ariauna to get up a little bit this evening and she sat (okay laid) in the green chair and watched some Disney station, in between catching a few zzzz's.

I ended up doing two loads of laundry at the hospital this afternoon evening. I just kept running down and switching it and then coming back. The laundry at the hospital is down in the basement. It is too bad it is not more convenient on the floor we are on, like it is at the hospital at home. But I guess it is better than nothing. I am not ready to leave Ariauna to go back to the RMH to do laundry yet, so I made this work. Today Ariauna needed a dressing change to, so they did that and then we got her all creamed up and got her in bed. I again tried to blog, but I am so physically and emotionally drained at night that I sit down and try to start typing and I start dozing off so then I stop because otherwise, I can imagine what the blog might say.

Today I am so grateful for our little furry family member "Taz". It is amazing how much a furry member can mean to everyone in the family. He has brought our family lots of joy from the little kids to the big kids. He was the best little doggy we could have ever asked for. We had him trained just the way we wanted him, and he was such a good pet. We love you Taz and hope you can RIP little buddy. I am grateful today and feel like this is yet another one of God's tender mercies. As much as we hate to lose Taz and even though it was such a huge shock for him to just pass away right there in Jerry's arms I am grateful that Jerry and I did not have to make the decision to have him put down. I would much rather have had him go peacefully and quickly then to know we had to make the decision. As for everyone wanting to know if we are going to get a new pet. Because of Ariauna not having an immune system right now, we were originally told we could not get any new pets for awhile, so it is something we have to get approved by her doctor and it is definitely not something that will happen right away as Jerry does not have time to train a new puppy. If and when we do replace Taz, it will be with another miniature dauschund as that is our family favorite breed.