Sometimes, things just get crazy and this week is no exception. I'm just feeling overwhelmed and rather blundered at the moment, but hopefully, this will all pass.

one of the guinea pigs is sick, resulting in me breaking down at the vets office (luckily not in front of the vet), telling her that she can't be sick because I can't deal with both her and katie being sick at the same time. Blanche, the piggie, didn't care. She doesn't care about much right now...she's not doing well. The vet, who is, incidently, the vet that the house rabbit group our Phina is from uses, sent us home with an iv bag so we can give her sub-q fluids at home twice a day, plus antibiotics and crit. care, which is an emergency high-calorie supplement for herbivores (like ensure for guinea pigs). it was that or have a $430 vet bill for keeping her at the vets for a few days, when there isn't much more they can do there. She's not really responding, except to make sure we know she is very uncomfortable with being stuck and filled with fluids twice a day.

Katie's cockatiel has gone even more insane than usual and WILL NOT SHUT UP! constant "purp purp pweep pweep purp purp pweep pweep" all day, every day, even when she is eating and dosing. all the other birds are annoyed, and so must be extra loud to let her know that they are annoyed with her. I think I'm going to scream.

and to top it all off, we had a generally depressing visit to Sloan-Kettering on Friday. ok, no, it was not generally depressing. Dr. Athanasian has every confidence that he can remove the tumor and that there is a very low (he said 7%) chance of recurrance. Which is awesome. however, because of its location, there is pretty much a guarentee of a need for major reconstructive surgery at various points down the line. And, and this is a worst, there is a chance Katie will lose a signifigant amount of strength and dexterity in her hand. He is most concerned about the location of the ulnar nerve in relation to the tumor...it is the nerve that controls the pinky finger and half of the ring finger. he may have to remove all or part of it. he can do reconstruction, but it wouldn't necessarily take and, if it did, it still wouldn't be nearly as strong as before. but yeah, there isn't much of a choice here. I just wish it wasn't her right wrist. she plays instruments and does bookbinding, not to mention day-to-day things like writing and typing and lifting...

and we also talked to a Dr. Merchant, who is one of the docs on the pediatric bone cancer team. she is really awesome, actually. we met wiht her basically to determine how close the chemo protocal Dr. Wright is using is to what Sloan uses, and they are pretty much the same, other than a study using another, non-chemo bone building drug that Sloan is conducting. And that wouldn't be an issue until after the surgery at this point.

They are also playing around with her diagnosis. The pathology report that Sloan did said "high-grade undiferentiated sarcoma of the bone showing osteoblastic tendencies" or something along those lines, whereas the pathology from Syracuse said that this is definatly highgrade conventional osteoblastic osteosarcoma. According to Athanasian, this may just mean that the tissue sample Sloan analyzed was an immature area of the tumor and this will most likely not effect the chemo protocal because "they know its cancer, they know its sarcoma and they know its in the bone". But I guess Dr. Merchant, after we left, took a look at Katie's x-rays and the differing pathology reports and wants some other doctors, including Dr. Make (sp?) who is THE sarcoma guy at S-K, to take a look at it and possibly analyze another biopsy sample. I guess that she said that, if she had to diagnose the tumor from the xrays alone she'd say its "very cyst like". And katie looked at some xrays of osteosarcomas and compared them to her xrays and, yeah, they don't look the same. so, whatever the hell it is, it is presenting atypically from a bone sarcoma. but we'll know more in a few days.

so, yes, i think I'm going to scream.