The Battle of the Diaper Rash!

Sinatra pant-less letting her rash air out and waiting for her blood transfusion

This week will forever be known as 'The battle of the diaper rash'. The week started when Grandma Gloria joined us for what was supposed to be short routine labs visit on Monday morning, it was her first time visiting the clinic with us. This visit was supposed to be a quick and easy visit;  check height, weight, blood pressure and take some blood to get her CBC for this week. Little did Grandma, or any of us know we would be there for almost 6 hours! During this visit we learned that Sinatra weighed 29 lbs, a gain of another 2 lbs over the weekend and totaling almost 10 lbs since December 17th (we are trending at nearly a lb. a day).  and as we waited for our labs we had the doctor check Sinatra's bottom.

While waiting for all of the scheduled checks at the clinic, we had the doctor look at Sinatra's booty for the terrible diaper rash that developed last week.  We shared with the doctor that the rash started suddenly and grew rapidly early last week and while visiting the clinic then, we were able to score some hospital grade goodies from one of the nurses. We told the doctor that we had been diligent in obsessivly changing her and applying every cream and treatment known to man but the second Sinatra poops, all progress is lost and the rash is worse and has open sores again. Since it takes nearly five minutes to do a simple diaper change, because of the many things we need to do, we are changing her diaper nearly every hour and all we can think about is 'the diaper rash'! Oh, and to add to the fun, because Sinatra has gotten so big we had to buy new diapers and we are into a size 6 and may be buying adult Depends within a week. We truly didn't know that they make children's diapers as big as a size 6!!

Because of the rash we had to schedule additional visits at the clinic on Monday and Wednesday of this week and will be back Friday for her procedure. There was even a discussion of actually admitting her to the hospital to have round the clock wound care to try to make it better. Thankfully we aren't there yet.

Sinatra also received a blood transfusion today in order to get her as healthy as possible for her procedure this coming Friday. She will have a lumbar puncture to again check her spinal fluid for leukemia  and add more chemo therapy to her spinal column. She will also have a very critical bone marrow aspiration (she has had this procedure twice so far) to learn if Sinatra's cancer is in remission or not.  Our hair has much more grey in it this week just waiting for the results of the report. Fingers and toes are crossed!