Back to School

We are here and ready to start the new week. Ally finished up day 4 (of 4) of her "at home" chemo. It is called ARA-C. We are lucky because a nurse comes to our house and gives it to Ally right in the family room. No travelling required. Here is a picture of her getting it. As you can see, the nurse (Paulette) gets all done up in her chemo garb, for fear that it might squirt out and get on her. But there is Carly right on the other side. She was patting Ally's head and telling her to feel better. Carly doesn't really see all that much when it comes to Ally's care. I don't take her to the hospital for treatments because we really aren't supposed to. But she has seen a lot of finger pricks/blood draws in her day. And she has seen the home health nurses. And she is always very empathetic to her big sister. She offers to hold hands or sit right with her in the chair. She knows Ally always likes it if the nurse counts to three first. She will even play finger prick once in a while. She will grab my finger and then say "one two three" and poke me. She doesn't know any better. I am sure she thinks everyone does this sort of thing. But she is always very kind to her sister....except for the few times that she has ran into Ally's port while trying to give her a hug or something.

Ally is feeling pretty good. The last few days she has been battling headaches. This usually means that she will need a blood transfusion. Her hemoglobin was pretty low to start with, and that was before her chemo. So about 10 times a day Jerad and I ponder the question of whether she needs blood or not. We try to avoid unnecessary sticks, etc, so we are waiting it out a bit. We are hoping to get to Thursday and her planned hospital visit.

Dr B says that Ally should go back to school. At least for a couple weeks until her counts drop again. And/or until the flu starts running rampant in the schools. At this point, she will likely go back to the tutor. She is at the beginning of a round. Usually towards the end of the round is when her counts drop and her ANC hits zero. Like what happened on Christmas. So I guess our "riskier" weeks are towards the middle/end of January. It is quite hard to send her back. I feel some relief that there are no major events coming up (Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas were always looming large). But I still feel a lot of stress because I am scared of what can happen if she would get sick. I will just continue to pray that God will put a hedge of protection around my girl. And then I will send her off.....

Happy new week to all of you!!