A Peace-Filled Christmas

We continue to remain busy in the Bixler house.  Maggie is doing very well.  She is enjoying preschool and counts down the days that she gets to return.  We all went down to Dayton on Monday for Maggie's clinic appointment to see Dr. French.  He was happy with the way she looked and her counts checked out well again.  We are especially happy for that.  She goes to get her counts checked every three months and it feels like a week or two before we go, something comes up that starts to make us worry.  This time it was petechiae-like spots on her trunk (petechiae often are a symptom of low platelets).  This of course had us scanning her body multiple times daily checking to see if there were more petechiae or more importantly, were they going away.  In the end, they did disappear and did not seem to cause any harm, but it really stressed us out.

With Maggie's doctors appointment and good counts, we have been blessed with a worry-free holiday, the best Christmas present we could ask for.  We go back to visit the clinic in March where Maggie will receive an echo, EKG, and have more involved blood working looking at several organs and how they are functioning.  Please continue to pray that Maggie will remain in remission always and she will not have any long-term effects to the chemotherapy treatment.

Since our last post, Maggie and Colin celebrated their birthday.  Maggie turned 5 and Colin turned 2.  We had several celebrations with our family and Maggie got to go to Chuck E. Cheese for the first time.  She had been asking to go for awhile and we finally took the plunge.  We all had a great time and she was asking to go back the next day.

And finally, we had some family pictures taken by a college friend in November.  She posted some of these pictures and a reflection of our family on her blog.  To view the pictures and read her comments you can click on the following link http://www.runningchatter.com/2012/11/i-offer-no-apologies-for-this-picture.html.  She did a great job of capturing our family on camera.  Thanks again, Summer!

We wish you all a Blessed,  Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!