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On June 1, 2010 our two year old, "Little Air Bear," was diagnosed with Childhood Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) Type M7. After enduring 146 days at Primary Children's Hospital, Erin is now in remission and living a full life at home with our family. Her strong will and constant happy smile is an inspiration to us all. Through our difficult circumstances we found great strength and peace in our Savior, Jesus Christ. Thank you for checking in on us.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Seeing Beautiful

There was a time when I saw cancer
There was a time when I saw sickness
There was a time when I felt heartache
There was a time when I felt despair

Now I see beautiful
I see health
I see life


Thank you to all of you who have happened upon this blog today.
I hope you find hope and feel God's love as you read through my posts about Little Air Bear's cancer story.  Thank you for leaving comments about your own children who have fought or are still fighting cancer.  God will support you through you trials your troubles and your afflictions.

Saturday, January 5, 2013

24 Month Clinic - TWO YEARS!

  TWO YEARS IN REMISSION!!!
Erin has made it two whole years in remission from her Acute Myeloid Leukemia.  I am thrilled.  Once we hit 5 years the chances of her relapsing are just about nil.  The further we get from diagnosis the better her chances of never relapsing.
Erin survived getting her blood drawn in the lab. She did so much better when she was 2 years old, now it's like she knows the reality of how much she dislikes being poked.
THE GOOD NEWS IS . . . . . 
We got the okay to only have blood test twice a year!
It's too bad you couldn't just see me doing a jig!
So now we only go back two times a year instead of four times.

Erin getting her height taken.  She is wearing the mask because she had a cold she was fighting and we didn't want to get any of the other kids in the Hem/Onc clinic sick.
Getting her blood pressure taken.
 
 For like two years you've been seeing me post about her snacks, but SERIOUSLY, this is just about the ONLY thing Erin remembers about being in the hospital . . . eating Cheetos and drinking root beer.  I think it's pretty cool she doesn't remember all the awful things.
Here's the Not-So-Good-News . . . 
Erin is small.  Like super small for her age.  From December 2011 to December 2012 she gained exactly 1.12 pounds and only grew 2.01 inches!  This has everyone worried.  Erin weighs 11 pounds less than the average girl her age.  We were ordered to go to radiation to get an x-ray of her wrist to check if her bone growth is normal.  Here she is getting the "picture" of her hand taken.  She totally doesn't mind x-rays which is cool for us!
 Welp, her bone growth is spot on.  I was thankful for that since I didn't really want to have to go down the endocrinology avenues of hormone therapy.  But, we're all a little stumped about her body size.  We don't really have a plan either, just lots of hope that she'll keep on growing.  Maybe she'll continue to grow and that she'll keep on growing into her late teen years and catch up to everyone or maybe surpass us all and be 6 feet tall (or taller) like some of her girl cousins and aunts.

We also apparently missed getting her yearly ECHO on her heart, just a little mix-up in Oncology.  One of her chemos can cause severe heart damage so they monitor her heart every year.  We're not too worried about her heart right now since all her past ECHOs have come out great so we're just going to do it in June when we go back again.
Things are going great here and Erin is happy!  Her blood work from the last CBC is listed below and it all looks wonderful.  Something kind of cool is that we moved into an area where another little cancer survivor girl just lives down the street.  She had AML M7 just like Erin and was 2 years old when she was diagnosed.  I actually met her and her father at PCMC when we were both inpatient with our kiddos.  Small world!!
Labs from 24 Month Clinic
White Blood Count 8.4 (normal 6.0-17.0)
Hematocrit 39.3 (normal 34.0-40.0)
Platelets 250 (normal 150-400)
ANC 4000 (normal 1500-8500)

Labs from 21 Month Clinic
White Blood Count 8.
Hematocrit 40.4
Platelets 273
ANC 2900

Previous Labs from 18 Month Clinic
White Blood Count 8.6
Hematocrit 43.6
Platelets 311
ANC 3660
Previous Labs from 15 Month Clinic
White Blood Count 9.2
Hematocrit 43.6
Platelets 317
ANC 4200