Sunday already!

Once again, I apologize for the delay in updating.  I stayed overnight at the hospital last night.  It is hard to type out a post on an ipod!  Aly's blog site is also blocked by the hospital.  I have a special code to get in it, but it was not working today for some reason.
I am home now.  Grandma Jan is staying with Aly tonight so Kevin and I can work tomorrow.  Kevin has a meeting he can't miss and I have payroll to process by 9 am! :)
Anyways, you aren't reading to know what we are up to.  This round is going good for Aly.  She had a bit of a bump yesterday.  The main reason they do this 5 day session in the intensive care unit is so they can use an i.v. drip of the DDAVP medicine that controls her urine output.  They can be more precise on the doses vs. the oral pill she takes at home.  These chemo chemicals in the 5 day session are very hard on the bladder, so they have to keep pumping in the fluids so the chemicals don't sit in the bladder too long.  It is a tricky balance of keeping her sodium levels even.  When she goes too much her sodium levels go high which causes very bad headaches and could cause seizures.  When she doesn't go enough, her sodium levels drop which make her very tired.  Yesterday her sodium level spiked high at one point and she had an extreme headache which caused some vomiting, similar to a migraine.  They gave her a dose of morphine and increased the DDAVP.  After she slept for awhile she was doing much better.
Now that they have figured out the best course of action, her sodium levels have stayed even and she hasn't had any other issues.  She had a very good night of sleep and slept until 9am this morning.  She had a great day today and was feeling really good.  No vomiting which is a little unusual for this point, but we'll take what we can get!  Aly and I spent the morning and early afternoon together.  We found an Old Maid card game in the game cupboard at the hospital so we had a fun time with that.  We found it to be a little boring with just the two of us, so after a couple of games we included her monkey, "Tiny" in the game.  She thought that was hilarious and she was laughing up a storm when she kept picking the old maid from Tiny's hand.  We also took some walks.  One around the floor during which we talked about this being her last chemo round.  We have to drag the i.v. pumps along during these walks and she was complaining about that.  I mentioned that hopefully this will be the last time she'll have to be connected to all that and she said, "oh yeah, I forgot about that."  Then she got a big smile on her face. During the other walk, we left the floor to go on a hunt for something that sounded good to eat.  That was the major battle today.  She didn't want to eat anything.  (Yesterday she couldn't get enough.  They had given her a steroid medication to help protect her bladder as well, and that made her really hungry.)  Today was a different story.  We took a walk to the gift store where she found some sour skittles.  Then we proceeded to the cafeteria where she decided on some plain vanilla yogurt.  After eating a little of the yogurt she decided it didn't taste good.  Nothing tastes good to her except sour things.  We also watched a movie and she let me watch a little of the British Open Golf and then we watched part of the U.S. soccer team playing in the world cup.  It is too bad the U.S. lost, they should've won!  That was a good game.  Although, I am happy for Japan.  Our family has many Japanese friends after living in Japan for a couple of years and it should be a big lift after the tough year Japan has had.  At one point during the soccer game Aly told me she felt like she had taken some Benadryl and shortly after she fell asleep for a while.  She woke up when Kevin and Grandma Jan came.  She was still feeling tired when Kevin and I left, so I'm guessing that chemo is kicking in and the next couple of days may be a little more difficult.