Another Sleepless Night

Poor little Allegra did not have a good night or day today.  She is very unsettled, restless and in pain.  She is just so gorgeous.  She tells me "sore".  I say "where does it hurt baby", she tells me "there" pointing always to her right knee.  I say "does your tummy hurt", "yes", "does your mouth hurt", "yes", "does your leg hurt", "yes", "does your bottom hurt", "yes". I believe she is sore everywhere but different levels of pain.  There is bone pain from her fractures which would be sharp, bone marrow (leukaemia) pain which is constant and dull, all over yucky pain from chemotherapy and mucositis which can be severely painful.  My little sweetheart is on many different medicines for all these ailments.  Medicines for her disease, medicines for the side-effects of her disease, medicines for the medicine side-effects and medicines that are prophylactics.  My bio-dynamic, organic-fed and natural product baby is loaded with chemicals.  It's hard getting used to these being all good toxic chemicals that are making my little Allegra well again.

At this stage in her treatment as her blood counts are low and she is neutropenic, mucositis occurs.  This happens because Allegra's chemotherapy medicines are killing rapidly dividing cancer cells that are already there and unfortunately this treatment can't tell the difference between dividing healthy cells and dividing cancer cells.  Mucositis is painful inflammation and ulceration of the mucous membranes lining the entire digestive tract.

So I have put our sleepless night and unsettled day down to mucositis.  But the good news is that Mar Ma (grandma) is having a sleepover tonight and I am having a night in the meeting room which is 2 doors away.  I need sleep.  This is the plan anyway.  Let's see how I go.  I know mum will be fine, but will I?

Allegra and I have not slept away from each other at all, ever.

This is Allegra's medicine pole!