Round 2

Ellen has recovered from her first set of chemotherapy and came home on Monday for a well deserved week away from hospital. She has been on fine form and we received good news on Thursday that the initial chemo has worked and she is now in remission (ie no sign of leukaemia cells). Unfortunately, given the high risk of recurrence, she needs further intensive treatment which involves another round of chemo followed by a bone marrow transplant. We are heading back to hospital for round 2 of chemo tomorrow and, all being well, expect to be there for 5-6 weeks before Ellen is well enough to come home again.

Still waiting....

Ellen is doing OK. She had another infection towards the end of last week, but that has now settled with more IV antibiotics. We are still waiting for her blood counts to come up before they can assess how she has done. This will take another week or so.

Ellen is 4

Ellen had her birthday celebration on the ward this week. She had fun dressed up as 'Jessie' from Toy Story. She is doing pretty well at the moment. We are still waiting for her bone marrow to start working again before we find out if the chemotherapy has worked. We hope to then have a few days at home at which point we will have a proper party.

Update

Ellen is doing as well as can be expected. The temperatures and mucoscitis seem to have stopped, but she is very tired and all her hair has now come out. She is on IV antibiotics and is being fed via naso-gastric tube. We still have a few weeks before her bone marrow will hopefully start to pick up and we will find out how successful this course of chemo has been in attacking the leukaemia.

Lag effect

The effects of Ellen's chemotherapy are now kicking in. She has a temperature and is developing mucoscitis (inflammation of the lining of her gut). She will soon need another nose tube as her appetite has tailed off. These effects will get worse before they get better so we now just sit and wait for her to feel better.

Doing OK

Ellen's Hickman Line went in fine. She has now had three days of chemotherapy and is doing OK. We now have a week more of daily chemotherapy. We will then continue to be in hospital for 4 - 6 weeks whilst we wait for the effects of the chemotherapy to wear off. At this point we will find out if the chemotherapy has worked and therefore what the next step will be.

Signing in

After a truly wonderful summer Ellen has sadly become unwell again. She has had several viral infections over the past eight weeks. We initially thought that these were straight forward winter bugs but it has now become clear that Ellen has developed Acute Myeloid Leukaemia. This is a rare complication of the bone marrow transplant she had 18 months ago. Today she is having another Hickman Line put in and will start a course of chemotherapy that we hope will clear the leukaemia cells. It is going to be yet another tough journey for Ellen as the doctors are not sure if the chemotherapy will work. We remain positive that Ellen's strength and tenacity will get her through this.