The doctors are pretty impressed with how well Avery is doing so far.
We’re just grateful we haven’t hit the “hard days” yet. We know they’re still to come.
Today, Avery woke up scratching the area around her Biopatch.
Biopatch is a sterile polyurethane foam dressing infused with an antiseptic used in the sterilization of her Central Line. It helps fight infections
Looking closer, the red patch from before was unchanged. Still the same color as before.
But she had some new redness and purple marks.
The doctors believe the new area is skin irritation (chemo makes the skin very sensitive) and the purple marks are bruises from her scratching (due to low platelets).
They tried a new medicine to help with the itching and it worked great!
It also helped her take a long 3-hr nap this afternoon.
She also received blood and platelets this morning to help with her counts.
As well as her next dose of Methotrexate (used as a prophylaxis of graft-versus-host disease).
Another side effect is also rearing it’s ugly head: Mucositis.
In layman’s terms: mouth sores.
Swelling inside the mouth and throat can lead to painful mouth sores.
She started clearing her throat a lot this evening, plus we can see her saliva increasing and she is pushing bottles away.
She has had mouth sores before and they’re not fun at all.
We’re hoping we can keep these, and the pain associated with them, under control.
Otherwise, she played well for her PT for about 20 minutes and had a mostly good day.
It’s always a few steps back and then forward.
But, we’re making progress each day as we wait for engraftment.
Pray she has some relief from the mouth sores soon. It seems to be primarily in her throat right now and hurts her to swallow or cry.
