Monthly Clinic Visit

Maggie had her monthly clinic appointment yesterday morning. It ended up that one of the machines that runs her IGG level (immune system response) was broken, but we were not told that until after almost 2 hours of waiting for the number. Therefore, the appointment took much longer than necessary and we had to wait for a call back from the nurse to determine whether she would need an IVIG due to her number being too low. We got that call back this morning and Maggie does in fact need an IVIG as her number was 475. She needed to be above 500 to not be infused. This means that we must go back for Maggie to be accessed again (another poke on her port) on Friday for the 2+ hour infusion. This also means that Maggie's immune system has still not recovered. I am a bummed about both of these things. It has been almost 10 months since Maggie's last chemo treatment and they say that normally your immune system recovers within 6 months. This goes to show what a toll her body took with the chemotherapy, but more so the 3 month illness she endured. Dr. French was discussing taking Maggie's port out sooner than originally planned (perhaps in 2 months), but now with this knowledge that her immune system isn't healed, this may push things back again. We will see what he has to say.

As for the rest of Maggie's counts, Dr. French said they looked good. Though I was not especially happy to see an ANC of 1600 (normal is 1500 and above), they were not worried about it. We keep plugging away and Maggie continues to physically grow (she gained a half pound in a month to 31.1 lbs.) and blossom in her language and gross motor skills, though Andy and I both say she is quite a clumsy girl falling over quite a bit. She is very fun and funny and we laugh with her quite a bit. She is a typical 3 year old, climbing onto things, coming out of her bedroom with multiple excuses after being put to bed, leaving the table after eating half her meal and insisting I feed her while she walks around the house...

We had professional pictures taken of Maggie and Colin a couple weeks ago. I will try to post those soon. Thank you all for your continued prayers. Though our road is less rocky, we are still on the road to recovery.

These pictures were taken at Thanksgiving. Maggie is dancing in the first two. She loves to dance!

We were practicing our posing for when she was going to have professional pictures.

That is a phone next to Colin's head. Maggie had given Colin the phone to talk to someone.