This morning Solveig and Allistaire and I went to the hospital.  We started with Allistaire getting her blood drawn and then we had about an hour before her doctor’s appointment.  We went over to the SCCA Unit – our home base – and had fun introducing Solveig to lots of folks who have heard that she exists but had never met her before today.  We then headed back to the appointment with the nurse practitioner.  This was a relatively uneventful meeting where Allistaire’s CBC (Complete Blood Count) was reviewed and she was given a quick exam.  She sounded great and looked great.  The only bummer is that her phosphorus was a bit higher than the other day.  We had been sent home on Monday with a prescription for a medication which binds with phosphorus and thus enables it to be flushed out of the body.  This makes things easier on the kidneys who have, according to the oncology pharmacist, gotten “stupid” as a result of the chemo.  Basically, they need time to heal.  Despite having been given the medication to help with this, we had thus far been unsuccessful in getting Allistaire to take it because it required that we pulverize a pill and mix it with food.  The result was a rejection of the food and therefore, non-consumption on the medication.  We were sent home this time with cherry syrup that we can mix with the pulverized pill and give to Allistaire in a syringe.  This worked great tonight.  Also, I was surprised to discover that Allistaire’s ANC has actually gone down a bit and is currently 380 (down from 414 on Monday.)  I totally assumed we’d see a big boost up, but neither the nurse practitioner nor Dr. Pollard who I spoke with later were concerned at all.  They said that this was a natural fluctuation.  In addition, her platelets and red blood cell counts continue to rise which is a good indicator that things are going as they should be.  We will go in for clinic on Monday and have her blood checked again.  Because they do not have any beds available for an admit this Tuesday, we are looking at going in on Thursday, a week from today, unless a room should open up early.  Allistaire’s ANC has to be 750 before we can begin chemo.

The actual bone marrow draw went just fine as well.  There were no declarations of an incredible sample but when I asked how it went the nurse practitioner said that it was great and easy and no indication of fibrosis as she drew the sample.  Allistaire didn’t want to wake up at the end and was, as expected, quite angsty for a while.  By the time we got home, rather than wanting to sleep, she asked to ride bikes as soon as we got out of the car.  Instead she had fun playing with Sissy inside and essentially had no nap today and just went to bed a bit earlier tonight.

Now we await the results.  My understanding is that we will likely know something by tomorrow some time and probably complete results by this coming Monday.  We value you your prayers so much on our behalf!