Whitley Grace’s Story

Site created on October 22, 2019

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.

Newest Update

Journal entry by Ashley Clayton

Well as many of you know a week ago, Friday Aug 7, Whitley Grace had her final chemo treatment, we should have finished that chemo treatment and come home on Saturday. I had planned on writing an excited post about being finished with chemo when we got home. Unfortunately we aren't home yet. Those who have been following along since the beginning know that I lovingly refer to Whitley as Miss Murphy, as in Murphy's law "anything that can go wrong, will" well Miss Murphy has struck again. On Friday night after she finished treatment her broviac central line cracked under her skin, when we tried to flush the line you could see it bubble under her skin and she would scream, this meant surgery, unfortunately with it being the weekend they had to wait. So she had two IVs inserted to keep up with fluids, meds, and TPN.  On Monday they removed the broviac and inserted a PICC line which is on her arm now but it's the same concept. At this point we've realized that her blood labs are showing that some of her electrolytes were low they were working very hard on trying to correct them. We found out that she had yet another UTI and that her kidneys were damaged due to her chemo meds, over time her kidneys should recover but now we're discovering that her kidneys are dumping these electrolytes and bicarb in order to fight the infection. Due to the chemo, Whitley has been getting sick quite a bit and Monday night there was some dry blood in her emesis (vomit), I told the nurses and they passed it on to the doctor but seeing as she had surgery that day we weren't too concerned, it easily could have been that they intubated during surgery and there was a little trauma, but no big deal. Whitley was having a very hard time keeping anything down, including her meds so they decided to put an NG tube in on Wednesday. That night she threw up the NG tube along with bright red blood. The nurse and I called in the doctor and we decided to bring in a GI doctor in order to figure out what was going on. He put her on an NPO (nothing by mouth) diet in order to give her GI tract a break, she hasn't been interested in food anyways. We started giving her a med that will coat the lining of her esophagus and stomach, as it's possible the NG tube did damage, it is also possible that she could have developed an ulcer. In a normal healthy child they could do an endoscopy in order to figure it out but with Whitley's counts being so low we run the risk of doing more damage than good. So we're trying to treat it blindly but it seems to be working last night there were just trace amounts of blood and this morning there was none so it seems to be getting better. Then the results of the UTI sensitivity came back, this tells us what kind of antibiotics will be most effective in treating the infection, unfortunately there are no oral meds that will be effective, in other words we have to stay inpatient until she finishes her IV antibiotics which won't be until Wednesday. Apparently my girl wanted to go out with a bang, wanted to make sure her friends here at the hospital don't forget her! The silver lining is that hopefully when we get to go home we will be going home for the last time. Once we do get to go home it will be a bit of a waiting game as her scans aren't scheduled until Aug 27th so all we can really do in the meantime is pray that the results of those scans carry good news! As always I can't tell you enough how much all of your love, support, prayers, and good thoughts mean to us. I don't know how we could have survived the last 10 months without every single one of you. Thank you so much. You sure know how to make a couple of girls feel loved!

Patients and caregivers love hearing from you; add a comment to show your support.
Help Whitley Grace Stay Connected to Family and Friends

Your $25 donation to CaringBridge will help keep this site online for two weeks. And if you donate by March 28, a generous CaringBridge donor will match your donation, dollar for dollar, up to $10,000.

Make your gift in honor of Whitley Grace by midnight on March 28 to be counted!

Comments Hide comments

Show Your Support

See the Ways to Help page to get even more involved.

SVG_Icons_Back_To_Top
Top