Update from HOME !

It's good to be home! There's just no place like home for feeling better for the body, mind and soul. The only real damper in Kate's homecoming is the fact that her mouth and throat pain have made eating painful and she has not been able to enjoy more than a few bites at each meal.

On Monday morning home health came and drew labs. Kate's platelets had dropped from 51on Sunday to 19 by Monday morning. We weren't surprised when we were "invited" to the clinic for a transfusion of platelets on Tuesday.

Tuesday morning when we did labs at the clinic prior to the transfusion, the platelets had taken a nose dive to 7. We will keep a check on the platelets as they are the last part of the blood to recover. Home health will come again Thursday morning for labs, so we will know if we need another transfusion before the weekend. We hoped our visit to the clinic would be a short one since platelets only take an hour to transfuse. However, we should know better - it ended up being an all day appointment:

PRAISE: The good news of our visit was the tremendous rebound in Kate's WBC and ANC count. The white blood cells which were .9 at discharge had sky rocketed to 9.1!!!! The ANC (infection fighting WBC's) also made a phenomenal climb to 8,126. Kate is now well above the 500 mark and out of severe risk of infection. These levels will settle out and come down as Kate will not longer be in need of the IV nupogen

We then addressed the sores in Kate's mouth and throat. These just appeared on Saturday night, prior to Kate's coming home on Sunday. Because of the high WBC count, the doctor does not feel this can be chemo related mucositis. She thinks it may be viral. Cultures were done and we will wait and see. Kate received some IV pain medication twice during our day at the clinic to alleviate the pain. Another culture was done to check and see if Kate may have developed a UTI.
Kate had also noticed pain in the calf of her left leg. Upon examination the doctor notice a know in Kate's calf muscle. While she said it was highly unlikely, given that Kate's platelets were so low, that it could be a clot in her leg, she wanted to rule that out with an ultra sound. Thankfully, there was no clot on the sonogram, so we chalk this up as a knot in the muscle with instructions for mom to practice the massage techniques I learned in the hospital:) Finally, Kate's hemoglobin was on its way down, so she also received two units of RBC's.

We were both pleased when Kate's doctor gave her OK to Kate's trip to NYC later this month with the Drama Club from school. As I've shared before Kate's oncologist is all about her patients living as normal of a life as possible.

Kate woke up this morning (Wednesday) and asked me to contact her teachers to see if she could get some home bound work started today. I am encouraged and thankful to see her motivated and energetic enough to get back into her normal routine.

Maggie started track on Monday. She's excited that as a 7th grader she can go out for the junior high team. We woke up to more snow today and a 2 hour delay to school. That won't deter practice which has been running in the hallways of the high school:) She is loving her ballet and getting excited about the June recital as her teachers have been selecting the costumes for her dances.

REQUEST: Please continue to storm the gates of heaven with your requests for Kate's hearing. She and I both admitted to each other today that we are noticing a difference in her hearing. This is one of those times when we just have to cling to God and continue to make our requests known to Him for no further hearing loss or a miraculous improvement. The next audiogram will probably be in about two weeks. Thank you for your persistence in praying for Kate's hearing.

Covered by grace,
Elaine