Plugging away

Andy took Maggie to the clinic yesterday afternoon to check her counts and see how she was doing, especially after having fevers Sunday and Monday (Maggie's last fever was Monday morning--probably as the last of the ARA-C was leaving her body). Maggie's cultures were negative, so the fevers were most likely from the chemotherapy (which is standard protocol for us now). Dr. French was pleased to see Maggie doing well. She even managed to eat peaches in front of him--which I asked her if she was trying to impress him as she doesn't eat many solid foods. Maggie's hemoglobin and platelets were borderline low, so home care is coming out on Friday to do a CBC to determine if she needs transfusions. Her white count was 11,000 and her ANC was 10,000 (both being very high numbers). She is still on the rise from her last Neupogen shots. She should be falling very soon and Dr. French seems to think that ARA-C will suppress her counts more than any other drug she's had thus far.

Andy asked if we would be able to go home for Thanksgiving and he was not as positive as we had hoped. He says that it is all count dependent, but that he thinks she might be at her low next week. We will wait and see. Maggie has suprised us before by recovering quicker than we thought. I hope this might be the case again this time around.

As for now, we will wait for her counts to recover at home, enjoying the normalcy of life. I have learned that to share future plans seems to "jinx" us. We have learned over and over again that there are no such things as plans anymore. However, in looking at Maggie's protocol, after she has recovered her counts, which will take us to the beginning of December, Maggie will go into the clinic for weekly chemotherapy treatments. She will continue this for 8 weeks before being admitted again for a 5-day chemotherapy treatment. We hope that during these next 10 weeks, we will not experience any drama. We'd like to stay out of the hospital for those 10 weeks if at all possible.

Please pray that the chemotherapy will do its job of killing any remaining leukemia cells, that she will not get any fevers, infections or mouth sores, and that her counts will recover quickly once hitting bottom.