Okay, well, maybe it would have been a wee bit more enjoyable to sleep in a little later this morning but there’s no complaints here!

By 7:50am we were headed out to the hospital this morning.  Just past Southcenter, the traffic signs said “4 mile backup into downtown – use alternate exits.”  I toyed with the idea of getting off at Albro/Swift and just weaving my way north, but then a long line at the exit convinced me to stay on the freeway.  I don’t know what the deal was but it was a relative breeze getting into downtown.

Once at Children’s we were delighted to nearly run into Piper and her mom.  By the way, I really did almost run into them as I was driving into the parking lot and then proceeded to stop abruptly upon recognizing them which yet again halted their progress.  Sorry, I was overcome with joy.  Later in clinic Piper sported some handsome faux facial hair with at least 3 mustache stickers (there was a huge bucket of them at the front desk).

Labs were drawn and Solveig and Allistaire spent the waiting time before the clinic appointment running up and down the hallway, hand in hand, laughing and laughing.  Another little girl we met, Katie, joined in the fun for a while.

Then we had vitals done and Allistaire had no temperature, a fabulous blood pressure and an increased weight!  She’s up to 13.4 which is up another .3kg since last Thursday.  She is still down .3-.4 from her weight prior to getting sick but the sister is making progress!

Next came Allistaire’s clinic appointment which was all great news.  The weirdo purple spot on her ear was so faded that I couldn’t even figure out which ear it had been on at first, her wee bottom zit is only a pale pink spot, her lungs sounded great, her ears looked great, her heart was great and she had stellar blood counts.  Platelets are a whoppin’ 483, hematocrit 34, white blood cell count 3.1 and then we had to wait for the ANC which is always the last bit of data to come in.  During this brief bit of waiting time we discussed Allistaire’s almost complete lack of cold symptoms and it was decided that she is no longer in isolation.  Yeah!  Then the moment we were all waiting for, an ANC of 837!  Not only was this high enough for a bone marrow test, it is above the 750 threshold for starting the next round of chemo.  This meant we were off to the procedure room.

Allistaire had her bone marrow aspirate and biopsy drawn, was given a flu vaccine shot and received 50mg of Cytarabine intrathecal chemotherapy.  This is a slight jump from what she has been given all previous times.  Now that she is two years old, they up the dose from 30mg to 50mg.  The nurse practitioner doing the procedure said everything looked great and felt great.  Allistaire woke fairly quickly and within a minute or two began her 30-45 minutes of roid rage attitude and then at about the point we were passing downtown on the way home she had settled down.

At home Allistaire was extremely chipper and sweet, downed a fair amount of cheddar cheese, a handful of Golden Grahams and 2 sippy cups of milk before she went down for a nap at 2pm.

So, a full day thus far and one I am both thankful to be mostly done with and so very thankful to have so much going well!  Our last hurdle before round 4 will be the redo echocardiogram scheduled for this Thursday at 10am.  Tracy, the nurse practitioner did not seem too concerned about things but said they would need to get the results from that test and have Dr. Pollard and the cardiologist review it.  We are scheduled for labs and clinic Friday morning and I assume I’ll probably hear results for both the bone marrow and echocardiogram at that appointment.

At this point we’re scheduled to admit next Monday, April 2nd.  This is actually 17 days earlier than the projected date based on the longest time frame per round.  I’m all for getting this show on the road!  Please pray about the possible heart issue and that Allistaire would continue to grow stronger and avoid any more sickness.  Tracy said that the flu is really just starting to come out and that there are a whole bunch of viruses hanging out on the clinic.  Please pray that our last days at home together as a family for a long time will be lovely and maybe even that we would get our old fish room back 🙂