At this point Jaycee was really starting to feel the effects of the chemo. She was looking sick and we could tell at this point that she was starting to develop mucusitis (inflammation of the mouth and mucus membrane lining the GI tract). She would drool a lot more and you could tell her mouth and throat was inflamed and sore. We are day 9 into the fist cycle and we were told that she would be feel the worst around this time. She had not eaten for over 24 hours at this point and it was beginning to worry us. We had our home nurse come and access her port so that we were able to give her fluids to help her with dehydration. This made us feel a little better but she continued to not eat and the sores in her mouth began to worsen.
Our home RN accessing her port and doing a blood draw.
When we we were at the clinic getting another dose of chemo, Jaycee seemed fine. The Doctor checked her and he ordered to her to receive more fluids for the next three nights so that she didn't get dehydrated. He wanted us to keep an eye on her because her. Her blood counts were bottomed out and her ANC (Absolute Neutrophil Count) was 0 so he was hoping that they would start to come up which would help the sores in her mouth go away. Having a ANC count at 0 basically means she has no immune system and if she were to catch something her body would not be able to fight it off. He told us the mucusitis would hopefully start to get better over the next few days as her counts increased. Little did we know that things were just going to get worse.
Day 9 of first cycle. More chemo at the clinic.
So we took her home and watched her. We tried to do everything we could to prevent her from getting sick. But her condition continued to deteriorate and she still would not eat. It was really concerning at this point and we called the oncologist and they said if by the following Monday she hasn't eaten then we will need to bring her in. That seemed like a long time to me because that would be almost 5 days without food. We thought she would hopefully be on the up swing so we held out and did what the doctors said.
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