Home On The HILL...

We are back at our home on the hill.  This time the plan is to make this stay short and sweet.  This 2nd round of treatment goes something like this:
Inpatient at hospital 3-5 days
Home 3 days
Inpatient at hospital 3-5 days
Home 3 days
Inpatient at hospital 10-14 days
Fun, fun.  But it is exciting to be beginning the second round.  Bring it on.

We were supposed to only be home for 1 week, but when Evalette's labs were drawn on May 2nd, her ANC (which are the infection fighting cells of the white blood cells), which were supposed to be going up, actually were down...they were a big fat ZERO!  So treatment got postponed until Monday. But then her ANC was only 100 and it needed to be 750 in order to start chemo again.  So back forth and back forth from 100 to 200 and finally this past Monday, ANC was 700.  And on Thursday they hit 2000!!! So exciting.  So we started her second induction of treatment yesterday.  It started with a lumbar puncture, a bone marrow aspiration (to see if she is in remission) and a catheter placement (this is because the methotrexate that she will be getting is horrible on the skin and will cause horrible diaper rash if it is against her delicate bum).  That all went well.  Around 5 pm yesterday, the 24 hour drip of high dose Methotrexate was started.  Nasty, nasty stuff. But she is tolerating it well.   We will know early next week if she is in remission.  Nothing changes if she is, the plan will be the same, but it gets really aggressive if she is not.  But I am sure she will be.   My sweetheart is getting used to the in and outs of the hospital.  She slept through the night with one little adventure of having to change the sheets because her catheter got kinked at 4:30 am.  Even with the nurse coming in every two hours for a urine sample, vitals every four hours, and zofran every six hours, Evalette slept through it all.  Little champ.  Mommy needed a good night.   We get to go home as soon as her system clears the drug...hopefully Monday.  Then we will back for the same thing next Friday.  

Today we took a walk around the hospital.  Her ANC count is still 2000 so we are free to leave our room.  We even went outside.  Evalette loved it. She napped great today and is pretty happy. Dave was her nurse today and she adores him.  She talked a lot, crawled everywhere, and practiced walking.  Lat time in the hospital she didn't do much, this time she is into everything!  She is doing wonderfully.  I am so grateful.  

Thank you all for your continued prayers.  Evalette is doing well, so great that the doctors keep telling me that they didn't expect her to do so well and that she "looks too healthy".  I will take "too healthy"!  I know that she will continue to do well.  Coming back to the hospital was a bit hard, but I can do hard things.  Evalette can do hard things. My family can do hard things and we are going to do this!! Love you all!