I haven’t updated this blog for about 10 days. Sorry about that. Things have been busy at work, which is good, and also busy in the hospital – generally good but not entirely. The main problem: Isita has got shingles. No, I wish I was joking. This is  chicken pox – the sequel. Now that she has the immune system of a new born babe, she has caught it from remnants of the virus in her system from a couple of years ago.

She has been having an anti- viral to get rid of it and a few days ago she had a huge double injection into both thighs at the same time. Poor her. Poor nurses who had to administer it.

On top of this, for most of last week she had a rhinovirus – not that serious – but all the doctors and nurses had to wear masks which is a bit off-putting.

We are nearly over all that. Every day Isita has physiotherapy. She is weak and uncomfortable a lot of the time if not in pain. We have started tiny feeds through her nose tube. On Monday she had 15ml over five hours. We’ve got to 25ml today. She gets cramps but we have to help her through it. 

To put this in perspective, if Isita were to survive only on the feed and not the intravenous drip, she would need to take in about 1.3 litres per day. We’ve got quite a way to go.  For Marta and me this is the priority. We have to get Isita eating and moving again.

What about the remaining cancer treatment, you might ask? At the moment, surgery is out of the question. Isita is still losing platelets needed for blood-clotting. The poor state of her gut also rules out radiotherapy, which in the worst case could make her current tummy problems permanent.

While this is worrying, we have to hold our nerve. Since she started chemotherapy all the tests have shown Isita free of disease apart from the main tumour, large parts of which are now calcified – dead. We have two more tests over the next fortnight. If they are clear four months after we started high dose, then we must hope she will stay clear for even longer.

This is why we have to get Isita eating again, to get her moving, to get her home, to get her strong enough to deal with whatever comes next. 

Now here is something fun. Remember Isita was poster girl for Rays of Sunshine in Deutsche Bank’s vote to choose its charity of the year? They won! Hooray for Super Girl!