Doing well

Everything went well at Hassenfeld yesterday.  Stella's blood counts are improving overall.  We're keeping an eye on her ANC; it needs to come up a little for her to start her next phase of treatment.  The antibiotics she's on are actually partly responsible for suppressing the ANC.  We're taking her off her daily antibiotics starting Thursday, so we'll see how her ANC responds.  The Bactrim she takes on weekends also drives down this number, so we may decide to take a break from that, too.

Stella has begun to notice her weight gain, but we constantly assure her that it is temporary.  It's tough for all of us to see her appearance change so much and so quickly; that's why we consider a week from Wednesday--her last day on the steroid Decadron--to be a milestone.  

She's also thinking a lot about hair loss, although it hasn't yet begun.  All in all, she's pretty well prepared; we talk about it frequently and she's asking smart questions and making jokes about it.  She also understands that like the weight gain, the hair loss will be temporary.  While at Hassenfeld yesterday, she was actually fitted for a wig and was very matter-of-fact about it.

The next two weeks are big ones.  Stella's home instruction starts tomorrow--the teacher will come over 2-3 times weekly for a couple of hours at a time.  And next Thursday is the day when she'll have the procedure to remove the PICC line and insert a MediPort, which she will keep for the duration of her treatment.

I also hear there's some sort of election happening today.  The four of us will go to the polling place later this morning to exercise our constitutional right to stand in a very long line.