Zoe had another MRI on Wednesday... when Sean and I arrived in the recovery room, the nurse told us that they had to give Zoe some Ketamine. My unspoken response was "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? You gave her WHAT??"
You see, in my pre-mom life, I did some work as a substance abuse educator/counselor in various settings - prison, court system, hospital, and schools... I learned about this funky little drug called "special K" - aka Ketamine. Ketamine is often used in the club/rave world because it is a short-lasting dissociative anaesthetic that causes hallucinations. In the veterinary world, Ketamine is a large animal tranquilizer. My sweet little girl is neither a raver nor a large animal, so why in the world did they give her Ketamine???? Well, ketamine is also used as an anesthetic, so it was actually perfectly safe and appropriate for them to give it to her (her leg kept spasming during the MRI) but my initial reaction wasn't so accepting...
Anyhow, back to the MRI... the results showed neither growth nor shrinkage. Stability is considered to be a positive outcome by the doctors. I didn't expect any shrinkage since Zoe has had only two whole doses and two partial chemo doses in the past three months. She was supposed to have chemo directly after MRI, but surprise, surprise her counts weren't high enough - even after a three week break from treatment... this definitely made me feel a bit disappointed and frustrated. Zoe has had problems with her white cell count all along and it just seems to not make any major improvements, regardless of whether we keep her out of public, follow the neutropenic diet, yada yada. So, we might try one more round of chemo and then rethink our options.
No comments:
Post a Comment