Keeping Me On My Toes

Last week was a tough one. KK was keeping me on my prayer toes, for sure.

I started to notice that KK was holding her head to the right so we went to Dr. Brooke for an adjustment on Monday, but her alignment wasn't that far off. I also had to keep reminding her to speak clearly, because she was slurring her words. By Wednesday, I noticed that she was drooling a lot. As we were packing up to go to her appointment that afternoon, KK said her arm was off...sure enough, it was "floppy". I asked her to stick out her tongue and it deviated to the right. She was definitely having a seizure (looking back, she was probably having multiple little seizures over the last few days). I gave her a rescue med (Klonopin) and off we went to treatment.

When KK had to go to the bathroom during the IV, I went with her because the Klonopin makes her very groggy and lethargic. While in the bathroom, I noticed that the bag of solution they used for the Lipoic Acid Mineral Complex was dextrose and not saline like it had been. I asked the IV nurse about it and she said that the protocol was to change from a small bag of saline to a larger bag of dextrose between week 2 and week 3 as they up the dosage of LAMC over the course of 4 weeks. I found this intriguing because dextrose is sugar and cancer feeds on sugar...the reasoning behind using dextrose is that it will open up the cancer cells to allow more of the LAMC in.

KK was very tired on Thursday (Klonopin has an elimination half-life of 30-40 hours), but she was chatty and happy. However, KK woke up during the night on Thursday and said, "Mom, my arm feels weird." When I went into her room and turned on the light, I saw that her right arm was shaking. The seizing stopped within a minute, so I didn't give her a Klonopin.

I spent the next couple of hours asking God if this was the beginning of the end (I hate to admit that my head went to places it shouldn't have to go over the course of the week) while praying for wisdom to know what was going on and what to do next. I finally fell asleep just before dawn. When I awoke, I remembered the dextrose solution and realized that it was the only thing that was different. I asked the Rothfeld Center to use a saline solution instead of dextrose on Friday, so they did. KK's vision is still a bit off, but, thankfully, there have been no (visible) signs of seizure activity since then.