yes, no. yes, no.

Things change fast I guess. They decided this afternoon that Chloe was stable enough to come home for a few days so she and Stacie got here at around 8:30. Her blood counts are fairly decent so if she feels like it, and its warm outside she might dress up tomorrow and at least go to the next door neighbor's house to trick or treat. I was talking with her about what she did over the last few days and asked her which of the days was her best. She didn't hesitate to reply, "None!" Then she showed me where they poked her with needles and told me about the shots that we get to give her for the next few days. She's not too excited about them, and neither are we. But, what do ya do.

Addie and Elsie were really excited to see their sis and came running into her room to show her projects they had done and tell her about girly stuff. She was excited to see several Magic Treehouse books that she can read. Thanks for letting us borrow them Callie.

My sister Kelly had a baby boy today at 2:13. He was 6 lbs 11 oz. and 19" long. She says everything went perfect, which is the way things should go. She is not naming him Jake which she may later regret if I ever do anything super cool that changes the world.

I ate a boiled egg today. It was yellow in the middle.

homeward bound...tommorow.....not so fast

The docs are leary about sending her home because she is losing nutrients so fast with her diarrhea. So I don't think she will come home today or I don't even know about tommorow either. We want to be cautious and do the the docs say cause we can't monitor her as well as they can here. So that is the news of the day. Jake is going to come and trade me cause I haven't seen my other girls for a week. I am excited to see them.

homeward bound...tommorow

It might be tommorow that we come home, only if it is only for a day or two. Her protein levels are still low so they gave her some albunim today and they will again tommorow, but we are to be on watch to see if her face is puffy again. Her crypto will not go away! It is a lingering bugger. I thought it would be good to have her home for halloween even if it is just a day. they don't worry about it on an hourly basis, it is days they worry but we are having her levels checked again on thurday so they feel comfortable sending her home, but we need to be aware it might be just for a day or two. (We will take that) They said they don't have to deal with this much, the albunim levels dropping and with her constantly popping they worry about it. That is the news for today, she doesn't feel well and that is to be expected since she just got a week worths of chemo. And all the other junk she has to deal with. She just wants to watch tv all the time and it is hard for me not to let her because of what she is going through. Although we take breaks to read and make pictures. At least when she watches tv she will talk to me. she walks like she is drunk cause her legs aren't use to walking (we are confined to her room because she has a contagious bacteria). You can tell I have been in a hospital room for a week cause I keep going on and on. hopefully our next post will be from home.

primary children sleep as they wait and wait and wait and wait..... and wait

Chloe doesn't feel good today. She woke up and threw up her meds and hasn't eaten 1 thing all day, and it is around 3. They gave her nutrients last night so at least she is getting what she needs. I wish she felt as good as she did the other day, playing doctor to a cloth baby putting medicine in the babys central line. I am glad she has some of those days. We are just waiting the weekend out because doctors don't usually come on the weekends. I made the mistake of getting my flu shot while here at the hosptial. Yesterday I felt like crap!! Today I am better so I am glad about that. I went to a sunday service here at the hospital, which is nice to have. Well I have nothing clever to say nor any good stories to relate so we will just sit and wait for tommorow.

fragile state

The Doc came in today and told me her albumin (protein) levels are still really low. That is what makes our viens tight and strong so the blood doesn't leak out. The levels are low because of the peg shots (chemo) she got in her last phase. It causes the puffiness yesterday, so they gave her a transfusion of that yesterday and her face looks alot better today but her levels are still low. They are giving her another transfusion of albumin today. Plus she needs a blood transfusion, her red blood counts are low (understandable since she has blood leaking out her veins). She has one more chemo treatment today, so they want to monitor her over the weekend until her counts rebound. Her crypto is making her have severe cramping so they are putting her on a med for that, she isn't eating well because of the cramping. The doc thinks she in a fragile state because of the low protein levels in the blood so he wants her monitored over the weekend and see how she is on monday. Wow, she is going through alot this girl!

It is good to be home, but we sure miss Chlo and Stac. Chloe is such a sweetheart and her sisters miss her, and whenever Stacie is gone I realize how much i depend on her for whatever. Stacie was unavailable so I had to call neighbors and my Mom a couple of times for crisis situations. Thanks Callie and Leslie, and Mom. Elsie caught a bug and broke in our new car by vomiting all over the place. I don't know how she had that much fluid inside her little body. There was stuff everywhere inside the car. I had to pull up the rubber floor and after 3 or 4 scrubbings I thought i had it cleaned up pretty well. It still smells like vomit. Spence calls it the barf-mobile now. I have a few more tricks to try, we'll see if they work. So as usual, once Elsie gets her stomach cleared out she had tons of energy again. The next morning i left her inside for just a couple of minutes (if that) and she got fingernail polish all over the countertop and floor. She came running outside with polish all over her hands, arms and clothes. Luckily it came up easy, and she's a cute little stinker.

Nurse Stacie

I get to spend some days with sweet chloe in the hospital and we had fun looking at the primary book that the kemps were sweet enough to give her. She loves the activities of finding things in pictures that was along with it. Before she went to bed last night she threw up all the yucky meds she had to take and when she woke up this morning I noticed her face was really puffy. One of her eyes hardly could see. They are checking to see if the low protein in her blood is the cause. She is in good spirits today, scooby doo is on and she looooves scooby doo! I don't know exactly when we will come home but when I do come home I get the pleasure of giving her nupegene shots in her leg daily until her counts return to a certain level. Just call me nurse Stacie!!

Covergirl

Pretty fancy news this morning. The Make-A-Wish Foundation has selected Chloe to be on the cover of their 2008 Calendar and there will also be a photo of her on one of the months. Apparently they sell the Calendar for a fund raiser so we'll have to post information about that when we find out.

Stitches and Stuff.

Chloe's been doing pretty well with her chemos so far. She actually ate better yesterday which was nice for a change. The anti-nausia seems to be working, she just feels lousy. Sounds like it may get worse as the week goes on. She has to get up every 2 hrs to pee so they can make sure her kidneys work. Kind of makes me uncomfortable knowing they have to track her urine output to make sure her kidneys aren't failing.

She's been a good performer so far though -just had stage fright a couple of times. They didn't tell me that they had to do this, so i was a little confused yesterday. We had this nurse named Sarvar from Russia, or somewhere. She is nice but she kept coming in, pointing at Chlo and she'd say "She hauss to pee!" So the first time i just took her in the bathroom thinking maybe Chloe was indicating to her that she had to go. But a little later she just pokes her head in the door, points at Chlo and say "She has to Pee!"
So i said, "well, she just went a mintue ago."
But I was cut short with "No, she has to go pee now!" I thought maybe she was phsycic or something, because Chloe did in fact have to pee once i got her up. But after several more times of demanding she pee, i asked the other nurse what was up and got the scoop.

Her pic-line almost came out last night when her stitches broke, she didn't like that a great deal. They ran us down for an xray and we were in and out with some snoopy sitckers in 5 minutes, it was amazing. Luckily they can still use the pic-line, the dressing changes are just more painful for her because they have to press on the line to keep it in place. The nurse felt really bad because it happened while she was changing her dressing, but she was being so gentle there was nothing she could have done to prevent it. One of the stiches had come out earlier in the week and Stacie is super careful too. The stitches just had issues i guess.

In other news, Elsie drew on the Ball's house. Luckily it was just sidewalk chalk, but sorry Justin and Callie. You're good, patient neighbors. Jones', you might want to lock up your chalks, markers, pencils, pens or any other writing utinsel or object that could be used as a writing utinsel. Or, maybe we can just teach Elsie about laws pertaining to destruction of property. I thought we were done with that after she drew on the outside of our house, and all over the basement walls a year or two ago. I guess she needs a refresher course.

Well, she has to pee. Later.

Yahoo!

No, i'm not referring to the web company whose name came from an acronym for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.

This is actually a post about some good news. Yesterday, while Chloe was under for her spinal tap they took a bone marrow sample for testing. I just got the results from the Doc and she now has 0% leukemia cells in her bone marrow. This is good news for [obvious] and numerous reasons. A few weeks ago she had over 90% cancerous cells. The bone marrow transplant cannot be given if the leukemia is not in remission. We were real concerned about this since it came back after her initial treatment and the bone marrow specialist told us that if it does not go into remission... well, I just don't want to say what that means it's just bad news all around and I've tried not to think about it. Anyway, sounds like the chemo is doing it's job. Thanks everyone for your prayers - I know they have helped and we really appreciate it. Please keep praying that it will stay in remission!

The crappy news, she still has some bacteria issues in her intestines called Crypto, which keeps causing diarehha. So i guess she'll get some more antibiotics for that. It's all good though, she already has 3 IV lines right now, another can't hurt.

Today I ate a salad with 3/16" slices of carrots - cut the long way maybe 4 or 5" long. They were crunchy, much like I expected them to be. I was pleased.