Abdominal Paracentesis #8 And Chemotherapy Round V (August 28-29, 2024)

Just wanted to share a quick update on how things have been going with Ali’s treatment these past couple of days.

Yesterday, Ali had another abdominal paracentesis procedure, and they removed 1.8 liters of fluid. That’s a bit less than what they took out two weeks ago, and we’re happy with the continued progress, no matter how small. It’s a good sign that things are moving in the right direction, and we’re thankful for that.

Today was another round of chemotherapy. We started around noon, getting bloodwork done and having Ali’s port hooked up. Then we met with Dr. Michael Gibson, who let us know that Ali’s labs looked good. That was such a relief because there’s always a worry that if the bloodwork isn’t right, we’d have to push back treatment. Thankfully, we didn’t have to do that this time!

After seeing Dr. Gibson, we met with Bethany Raffalovich, the nurse practitioner handling Ali’s pain management. She made a few minor tweaks to Ali’s pain meds, but nothing major.

After that we went up to the 2nd floor to the infusion center. If you remember during the last chemotherapy treatment, we ran out of time and had to come back the next day for the iron infusion. This time, they got a bit more creative by infusing the chemotherapy through Ali’s port and the iron through an IV at the same time. This saved us at least a couple of hours, and we managed to get home around 8:00 PM.

We’re still doing the 46-hour take home chemotherapy, so we’ll be disconnecting that on Saturday night. It’s a grind, but Ali is hanging in there, showing her usual strength and grace.