Thursday, March 27, 2008

I write this post as my teeth are gritted tightly together. I looked down to find our adorable Tod with my computer power cord once again chomped in half. I have been so careful to put it away every time I am not using the computer. Well this time I WAS using the computer, and I looked down to see the wire in half in his mouth. Took him about 30 seconds. I was so mad, and believe me, he knew it! I have only had this last one for about 2 weeks. If anyone knows how to splice these together, let me know. I have already checked with our local computer store, and they don't do it. It's a wire within a wire, and Dave is figuring that out right now as he is taking it apart in an attempt to put it back together. I now have three useless cords here, and once again no way to use this computer until I buy another. GRRRRRR....

But, that's not what this post is about. This post is about what a GREAT day we had today. We went into clinic this morning to get Hannah's blood levels checked. Her levels were basically almost identical from last month, a couple down just a bit. I was concerned, but the doctors weren't. They say her bone marrow is suppressed from all of the chemo, and it takes long time to come up, and that she may always be a bit low. Here are her numbers:

White blood count 2.88 Normal 5.0-13.0
Red blood count 3.69 Normal 3.90-5.30
Hemoglobin 12.2 Normal 11.5-16.0
Platelets 237,000 Normal 140-400
ANC 1840 Considered at risk under 1500

Here is Hannah at clinic today drawing a road for her toy car she was playing with while waiting for the doctor to come in. So these counts are considered acceptable at this stage of the game. There is no reason to try and raise them, just have to wait. Everything else checked out fine. They told us we could go ahead and take her port out! Typical wait time is 6 months post treatment, but they told us that if Hannah would recur, she would need a different type of port and they couldn't use the one she already has for the new kind of chemo drugs, so we might as well take it out. There words were "Hannah's prognosis is very good and you can have the port removed whenever you want to." Aren't those GREAT words???? We're going to call and get it scheduled with the doctor that put it in at Stony Brook Hospital to remove it. I thought she would be excited, but she was crying, since #1 it requires surgery and #2 she realizes that for all further MRI's she has to get stuck for an IV for the contrast dye. Which is worse, port access or needle stick? I guess all needles are not a happy scenario as far as Hannah is concerned.

*****UPDATE-my wonderful husband has just successfully spliced the cord together and has saved Tod's life*****

So tomorrow I will check on scheduling the port removal. This is probably the only doctor whose name Dave and I can not remember, so I have to look it up.

Hannah also made a special delivery to Childlife today. She delivered some of her favorite craft items-foam sticker projects. Last time we were at Michael's she wanted to buy these since she said "when I was up on the 4th floor (inpatient) I was bored sometimes and would have liked these to play with so maybe the other kids will like them." Here is Hannah delivering her goodies to Faye. We stopped at a couple places on the way home to check for Wii's, but nothing yet. Next week the plan is to talk to the manager of a couple stores here in town to see if they would be willing to notify us when they get their next shipment. If that doesn't work, we may contact Nintendo directly, as Josephine suggested, to see if they would help.

We noticed today as we got out of the elevator that Hannah's picture was on the wall! They have pictures of the hemotology/oncology patients and rotate them every once in a while. I know you can't see the picture very well, but here is a photo of Hannah with the photo of Hannah! In the picture, she was sitting down in front of a very colorful fish wall, it's a nice photo. I was surprised to see how much her hair has grown since that picture was taken, I think it was from last month.

Wonderful day for us!! As I sign off, I wanted to mention our dear friend Sister Anne. She was injured on Monday by a car, and is now in a rehabilitation hospital with a broken leg. We pray that her recovery is swift and she is as pain free as she can be right now! We hope you are back in Cutchogue with us very soon! Please join us in keeping her in your prayers.

xoxo Kim