December 14, 2005

Leah and I have had a busy day in Iowa City. Rumor has it that the real world has received some snow, but since we have not been outside in a few days, and our window does not offer much of a view, we are happily oblivious. There are some positive aspects to hospital life.

While Leah's temperatures continue in the 99.2-99.8 range, this is not considered a fever by the standards here. She has yet to run a fever during this stay, and we are still questioning whether we will be going home tomorrow or waiting until Friday.

Dr. Rahdi and the resident Nancy and Dr. Sarvada visited this morning. Earlier Nancy had been telling Dr. Rahdi that she thought Leah was warming up to her since she had not screamed, "Get away now! Go away!" as she normally does. Dr. Rahdi replied that Leah had told him those things instead. The reason for this Mary in the Middle explained is that Leah is not wasting her time telling Nancy what she wants anymore, she is going right to the top. Leah was also pleasantly walking down the hall when we met Dr. Rahdi later in the morning. Upon seeing him she begins screaming and grabbing me to pick her up. Luckily he does have a sense of humor and assured Leah he would walk on the opposite side of the hall and hug the wall if he needed to.

While there is no love lost between Leah and the doctors at this time, tonight Kristi, her primary nurse is on duty. Leah smiled a lot when she saw her. She also did her best to entertain Kristi by writing on her face with crayons, and just being silly, in general. We are now waiting for Kristi to return so Leah can read her a bedtime story, Knuffle Bunny (one of our favorites from home).

Leah does have more energy. Her hemoglobin has risen to 9.2. They will check her blood again tomorrow. Since Thursday is a day we are normally scheduled to receive Vincristine on an outpatient basis, we will do this tomorrow from our room here. While she does have more energy, we are not getting a great deal of sleep. By the time she received blood last night it was 11 PM. After that was completed they checked her vitals. They do this every four hours. She also was up three different times to use the bathroom since she is receiving IV fluids. It is difficult to get a nap out of Leah, so we talked about this a great deal today. Her analysis was that we should put a video in and she would watch it with her eyes closed just like her dad watches football. I did finally get her to fall asleep, but had to wake her shortly after it started since we had to make a return trip to the library for more books and videos.

Tonight there was a pizza party for all the families with children here at the hospital. We enjoyed having a break from our hospital cafeteria food and doing something different. Tomorrow we are looking forward to music therapy, and perhaps a massage for me. We pray that her fever does not return and that the medicine and chemotherapy does what it needs to do.