A difficult thing about parenting a cancer survivor is not freaking out about relapse with every cough, fever, or "I'm not feeling good" complaint. I mentioned Mollie's lingering cough in the last post- this cough had been with her since Memorial Day. She had been through two bouts of antibiotics, and a few days of Claritin (or Allegra?), and seen three different doctors- the darned thing just wouldn't go away. None of her medical team seemed very concerned and chalked it up to allergies or "something viral".
But, around the 4th of July we got fed up and worked ourselves into a bit of worry about the stubborn cough. I took her in to see a different doctor than we had seen previously. Dr. Thomas also thought it was probably residual bronchospasm from having a cold, but he did an X-ray to rule out anything else since the cough had persisted for more than 4 weeks. He said the X-ray looked fine and sent Mollie home with a low dose, short course of steroids to help kick the cough.
Lo and behold, we get a phone message from the doctor's office a few days later telling us it was important that we call back because there was some additional information about Mollie's X-ray that we needed to discuss. Of course, they were at lunch when I got the message, so we really freaked out talking about all of the what-ifs. Seriously, if you are in the medical field, please don't leave those kind of messages for people who have been through something like cancer. Make sure you stick in a "don't be alarmed" or something. Geez! Oh yeah, and it would have been nice if someone had mentioned that a radiologist was going to review the images and get back to us-- we might not have panicked if we had been expecting a follow up call from the doctor!
Anyway, the outcome was that Mollie had a little bit of fluid in her left lung indicating pneumonia and they put her on broad spectrum abx in addition to the steroid.
We went back for follow up yesterday and the doctor (and radiologist!) confirmed that the pneumonia had resolved. Phew!
Mollie and Lucy head off to Camp Rainbow this weekend. While they are gone, the movers will come do their thing. We will pick the girls up from camp and then start the cross-country trek to our new home in California. Lots of balls in the air and I can't wait until it is over, however I'm a little sad and reluctant to leave the life and friends we have here in North Carolina.
