Craft Day

Ally is doing better today. Her fever is here and there. Sometimes normal, but never too high. The highest I saw was 100.4 today. I was thinking they may let her go home, but the doctor says he can't let her go until her blood counts start to come back up. It is called bottoming out...when a few of her blood counts go to absolute zero. Her white blood cells are there and they also look at this factor called ANC. (I think it is absolute neutrophil count.) When her ANC is less than 1000 her immunity is compromised. When it is less than 500, we are supposed to be careful. When it is less than 200, she is not allowed to go to indoor places and she has to wear a mask at times. Today it is at zero! So the doctor wants her numbers to start buiding again before he will release her. It seems this may be hard to do, because she just go two more chemo drugs on Friday. But hopefully it happens.

Ally and I have been hanging out and doing crafts today. Jerad took the other kids to our neighborhood pool party. So far we have made a potholder, 2 keychains, a necklace, a bracelet and some bobby pins. Earlier, when Carly and Evan visited we also took a long walk to the Children's Hospital playground. She went on the swings and was the perkiest I have seen her in three weeks. I actually heard her laugh a few times today. It has been a long time since I have seen that. It is weird, but whenever she gets to the hospital she always seems to feel better. She really doesn't seem to mind being here. It is really just hard on the rest of us. Tonight we had a girls night in watching Camp Rock and having popcorn. She is the only patient in the whole hemoc unit and has a nurse all to herself.

I have been talking about her port, but I never really got to that part in the initial story. They moved so fast with everything upon her initial diagnosis. We found out that she had the leukemia and within about 15 hours, they were doing surgery on her to put this port in. We had to pick the type of port for her. There is one that is under the skin, accessed by inserting a needle into the skin. And there is another one that actually has leads coming out of the skin, thus no poking, but they are always hanging there. There was no swimming with that one. It was a no-brainer for us...swimming is a huge part of her life. So her port is inside of her chest and it is about the size and shape of a bottle cap. A tube goes straight from this port around her chest and right into her heart.

When they took her for surgery...that was one of the hardest moments for me. They said they were gonna take her and she started crying. But then they didn't take her for about 15 more minutes. So, she continued to cry and make herself more upset for that time. We were not allowed to go into the operating room, and she was just so scared to leave us. The poor girl had been through too much already. When they finally wheeled her down the hall, she was just screaming for her Daddy. She is her Daddy's girl. We came around the corner, and I could still hear her crying for her Dad. I felt so weak, I could barely make my legs walk down the hall and out to the waiting room. During the surgery, they were also going to do a spinal tap where they tested her spinal fluid for cancer in her central nervous system. I was paranoid about that because that is what happened to my mom's cancer. They were going to give her an injection of chemo into her spine too. She made it through the surgery just fine. She has one incision that is about 2 inches on the left side of her chest. There is another incision right above that...it is only about half an inch. In a few years, when the treatments are done, she will need to have it removed. It ended up being sore for about a week, but now she says she can't even feel it. Although at the current moment, it has a massive bruise around it (another symptom of leukemia) and it looks pretty ugly. In this picture, you can kinda see where it is on her chest and how they hook her up to fluids/medications/ etc. They also take her blood draws right out of there. That's her best friend Madison who has been a very loyal visitor.

Right now she is asleep next to me, still holding onto the glo-stick bracelets that the nurse brought for her earlier. She looks cute. I am going to sleep next to her on a pull out couch. I really don't mind it. Maybe I will get more sleep here than I do at home with my annoying dogs! Thanks again to everyone for all of the prayers and wonderful comments we receive. Jerad and I read each and every one of them. Really! The couple of nice people who offered to donate blood: She is actually B negative. I am not sure how that would work, but looks like you may not be the right match anyway.

Praying that her counts go up and we get to go back home!