Thursday, February 26, 2009

Things continue to go well here. Amy is still feeling very good. The latest news is that we will be heading to meet with the doctors at Duke on Monday to talk about the bone marrow transplant.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Amy continues to do well. We are currently at the Infusion Center where she is getting another unit of platelets. Dr. Densmore stopped by and visited a little today. He continues to be pleased with Amy's progress. He said that we are probably looking at heading to Duke for an appointment with the doctors there late next week or early on in the following week. In the mean time, Amy will continue to come to the Infusion center each day and get blood work done and then get anything that she may need.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Hello Everyone! This is Amy - Michael showed me how to make a post. I just wanted to give a general THANK YOU to each of you. The amount of support that has been shown to me is unbelievable. As the updates have said I'm actually feeling really good. I expected this first round of chemo to be much harder than it was. The big news of the week is that I buzzed my hair pretty short in order to make the process of hair falling out a little less messy. Again thanks so much to everyone for the comments, cards, and all of the other things that I can't even begin to list here.

Amy

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Amy has been feeling pretty good over the past few days. Monday night she started getting a rash that by Tuesday was basically covering her whole body. The doctor said he was not very concerned with it and that is was probably just a delayed reaction to some medicine. The rash has started to go away in the last day or so. Her blood counts are looking good and Dr. Densmore is very pleased with her progress. For those wanting to know where to send cards, etc, we are going to have things sent to Greg and Kathy's House since we are unsure of where Amy will be each day (hotel or hospital). Here is the address:

201 Buck Horn Trail
Clifton Forge, VA 24422

Monday, February 16, 2009

We finally got to the hotel a little after 7 tonight. It took a while to get everything taken care of that needed to be done at the hospital. She will have to report each morning at 8 to the cancer center. There they will do blood work each morning and examine her. Depending on the blood results they will treat accordingly (give blood, platelets, or anything else). She is very happy to be at the hotel tonight. It is definitely an emotional lift for her, which of course is the reason the doctors at UVA started doing this with leukemia patients. Hopefully she will be able to stay at the Red Roof Inn for a while. Just wanted to let everyone know that updates for the rest of the week may not come as often as I am going to be back in Indiana for a few days to work.
Just a quick update for everyone. Dr. Densmore came by this morning and Amy has been cleared to move over to the Red Roof Inn. They are going to give her some more blood this morning and then this afternoon she will finally be leaving the hospital.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

As has been the trend lately, Amy had another good day. She is still rather board having to constantly sit in a hospital room. However at this time in the process, boring is a good thing. The chemo has now been over for a while and the blood levels have reached their lowest points. Now it is a wait and see game. This means that the doctors are waiting to see what happens to her blood levels. The blood levels should begin to rise over the coming days and weeks. Once her blood levels get close to normal levels, she will be deemed travel worthy and we will then travel Duke to meet with the bone marrow transplant specialist. This process of waiting for the blood levels to rise could take up to a month and possibly longer. She has still not had a fever since Wednesday, so we are hoping that soon she will able to get out the hospital, at least for a few days.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Amy is still feeling very good. She is a little tired this morning. She felt a little nauseous in the middle of the night last night for a couple of minutes, so she took some medicine as a precaution. This tends to make her very tired. She still has not had a fever since Wednesday afternoon and the rash she had looks like it is starting to go away. The doctor said he would like to keep her in the hospital at least through the weekend and then maybe early next week she will be able to get out for a little bit. Her blood counts are looking great and the doctors seem very happy with the way things are going.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Not much new to report today. Amy is still feeling very good. She has not had a temperature since Wednesday at 4, so we are hoping that she may be able to go to the hotel soon.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Amy has been feeling good again today. As of tonight her fever is gone. She has a little bit of rash on her face, chest, and back that she got in the last few days. The dermatologist came today and did a biopsy to see what is going on. Dr. Densmore, her attending physician, came by this afternoon to update us on some tests that they had been waiting for. Basically they were interested in looking at what they call cytogenetics. With this test they were interested in seeing if she had any mutations to her chromosomes in the leukemia cells. With AML, you can have good or bad mutations. In Amy's case, she has some bad mutations. This means that her form of leukemia is particularly aggressive and prone to rellapse with traditional treatment. Dr. Densmore has suggested that the next step be a bone marrow transplant. It will take some time before the actual transplant will take place. Before the transplant occurs they will continue to treat her at UVA to get and keep her leukemia in remission. The plan is to have the transplant done at Duke University as they are particularly experienced in the process. We're happy with this decision to treat it aggressively. We will continue to keep you up to date.
Amy again had a good day yesterday. She finished her last bag of chemo treatment slightly after 9 last night. She is starting to notice some minor side effects (mouth sores, acne, etc.) of all the chemo and steroids that she has had.  The main issue that she is having is that she keeps running a slight fever in the evenings and at nights.  She is currently being treated with two different antibiotics to fight any possible infections.  Due to her body's inability to fight infection they aggressively treat her when she gets a fever.  The policy here is that there is a 48 hour period you have to wait once you spike a fever, before they can release her. So currently it looks as if the earliest possible time she could move to the hotel would be last Thursday night or Friday morning. 

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Amy had a very good day yesterday. She is starting to eat a little more and had enough energy to walk up and down the hall a few times. She started her last bag of chemo around 9:30 last night. Last night she also got a little bit of a fever. They treated her with antibiotics and this morning her temperature is back down. She is again having a good day so far today. We are hoping that in the next few days she will be able to move over to the Red Roof Inn and at least get out of the hospital for a few days. Exactly when she gets to leave the hospital will depend upon how her temperature is over the next day.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Amy is still doing well. She was very tired yesterday although she did get out of bed and take a couple of walks down the hall. Yesterday afternoon they gave her some red blood cells and that really seemed to perk her up.  She had a little fever at one point yesterday, but it has since gone away. At one point last night she had a little nausea, but she got some medicine for that and she then slept the rest of the night. She is now sitting up and eating some breakfast. So up to this point, everything is still going well.  She will be getting her last dose of chemo tonight. We are being told that if all things go well and she doesn't get a fever, she may be able to move to the hotel sometime Wednesday. 

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Not much to report today. Things are proceeding as expected.  Amy has been very tired today.  She has been sleeping most of the day.  This is pretty typical for this type of treatment once your blood counts get this low.  The good thing is that she has not had any nausea today.  Hopefully she will continue to rest well throughout the night.  

Friday, February 6, 2009

Things are still going fairly well here. Amy got a little uncomfortable a few times yesterday. Her back was a little sore from the bed, so it took her a while to a find a comfortable position to rest.  She felt pretty nauseous at one point last night, but they gave her some medicine and that seemed to make her feel better and be able to get some rest.  She received the third and final dose of one chemo drug and will continue to get the other drug for a few more days. We will continue to try and keep everyone up to date on all the happenings. 

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Things are about the same here with Amy. She started her second treatment last night and that is going well. She is a little irritated with feeling so bloated due to all of the fluids that she have been receiving. We had lots of visitors yesterday and that seemed to really make her tired. Overall things are still going well though.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

First Treatment

Amy started her first treatment last night around 11.  She will constantly be given one of the chemo drugs for 7 days. Also for the first three days she will also be receiving another drug as well. So far she has been feeling okay. We walked around a little this morning and she started to get a little nauseous but they gave her some medicine and she has been resting well since.  She is just about to eat lunch, so she seems to be feeling okay.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

So it is about 10:30 pm Tuesday and we are still waiting for Amy to get her first chemo treatment.  She has had a busy day so far. This afternoon she had her central line put it. This allows them to get easy access to take blood as well as give her whatever medications she needs. They say the central line is nice in that she won't have to be poked and prodded to get blood taken constantly. I don't think that she agrees with them yet, as the central line is giving her some pain. Also they have started giving her some blood today (both blood and platelets).  We will update you tomorrow and let everyone know how the first treatment goes. 

Monday, February 2, 2009

Hello all.  Just wanted to give everyone an update on the days happenings and what will be going on in the future.  Amy was admitted to the UVA hospital this afternoon to start this process. Starting tomorrow she will begin seven days of chemotherapy treatments. The purpose of this initial treatment is to basically kill off all the bad blood cells in her body. After the seven days of treatment she will remain in the hospital for a few weeks, while her blood counts are given the chance to rise to a normal level.  I know some people have asked about the address at the hospital so here it is: 

University of Virginia Hospital
Amy Crizer Room 3115
1215 Lee Street
Charlottesville, VA 22908

Thanks for all of the support and we will try to keep everyone as up to date as possible.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Directions

This is where we will be trying to keep everyone up to date on how things are going with Amy. By coming to this site you will be able to read the updates and see how things are going. If you want to leave a comment, you will need to register. When you click to leave a comment it asks you to select a profile, here you should select Google Account. This will take you to a page to create an account, which only takes a minute. Once you start your account you should be able to freely add comments as you would like.

Thank you for all of the support, well wishes, and prayers.
Hi everyone! We're just testing to see if this works.