Done With Round #2!

This morning Erin had her last chemo for round #2. YAY!

Her ANC has been around 1800, but today it dropped to 500. Yesterday I asked the doctor why her ANC was so high even though she was almost done with the chemo. He explained that during the first round of chemo her bone marrow had 80-90% leukemia cells and they are less resilient and easier to kill off, so that is why her ANC was always low during the first round of chemo.

However, going through this second round, her bone marrow only had 2% leukemia and a lot more white blood cells. The chemo kills everything, good and bad, but the white blood cells are more resilient and harder to kill, that is why her ANC stayed so high for so long.

Tomorrow will be her last day that she'll be allowed to run the halls of ICS and play in the toy nook. Once her ANC drops below 500 it's too risky to have her roaming the halls, even with a mask over her nose and mouth. We have to be so careful that she doesn't get sick from anything in the air. I don't know how we'll keep her from wanting to go out and play, she has loved it so much. When she wants to go out and play she picks a hat and her sandals from her drawer and then she heads to the door and tell us it's time to go out and play. We will have to get really creative in keeping her entertained for another 3 weeks while she just sits in her room waiting for her counts to come up.

She's been more tired and cranky the last 2 days as her red blood cells and platelets are getting low. She's scheduled for a transfusion tomorrow.

My parents and my little sister Emarie have been so kind to take the weekend shift so that we could come home to our house and be sort of be normal again. Cecily was so thrilled to be home. She kept saying that she loved being home, but that she missed Erin too. She has repeated that over and over. It's nice to be home, but we feel the absence of our Little Air Bear.