February 15, 2006

Leah did well with both her fourth and fifth day of treatment and as planned we left Iowa City around 5:30 last night. She was quite ready to get out of there -and I was, too. Her fourth treatment (Monday) was started at 8 AM and yesterday's at 5 AM. These two seemed to make her a bit more tired, but after that many days of it I think that is expected.

On Monday night Lis stopped by again which helped break up our day. We also acquired a roommate who came out of ICU-and probably still needed to be there, and then had to move again to a new room-and got a new roommate there as well. Leah was tired Monday night, and fell asleep early. However, a little after midnight the nurse noticed her medicines were not flushing into her port, so we had to wake her up, take all the tape off of her port and then found the needle partially out of her port-it looked like it was just hanging out of her port. As you can imagine this was rather traumatic for her and there was a lot of crying. Luckily they were able to push the needle back in and retape her port, but by then I was rather traumatized after seeing her go through all of that. Once again her age is to her benefit. An adult would remember this experience, but just minutes after this was done she was giggling and asking for candy. On Tuesday Leah was able to decorate Valentines cookies, have music therapy with Kirsten, have a massage, and even give Clifford a hug and have her picture taken with him. I was surprised she enjoyed the Clifford visit as much as she did. Usually when she sees Chuck E. Cheese or Santa she wants nothing to do with them, but she thought Clifford was great and hugged and petted him. Chris was there to pick us up around 4:30 and we were ready to go shortly after that.

We arrived home around 7:30 last night and Chloe was waiting here with Grandma Karen to greet us. She was soooo excited to have us home. She and Leah were dancing around last night holding hands singing "I love you, I love you.." Every time they would stop Chloe would want to start up again. We enjoyed watching the Iowa game even though it did make bedtime late.

Leah has been running around and giggling and laughing like crazy today. She must feel pretty good to be as talkative and happy as she is. She is standing behind me now watching as I type and hugging me....she keeps talking about holding Chloe's "wee little hair" in bed. Usually she holds my hair to get to sleep. Chloe does not seem very interested in having her do this.

I worked this afternoon and Grandma Karen took care of the girls. Leah was not so sure about this at first. Her exact words were, "Well, Tina....I am not sure Karen can handle Chloe the whole time. She kind of bothers me when I take a nap." They did seem to manage fine, though.

We are back to our daily arsenal of medicines. Leah has not complained at all about it. Chris still has his cold and Leah told him he should take some magnesium and bactrum and calcium. She also received a few packages in the mail from different people and enjoyed launching a new doll into the air -and at us. We may need to pay a bit more attention when she has that toy in her hands. She and Chloe also spent part of the evening dancing. They have this special dance where they grab their pants and walk around they call the crotch dance. This seemed to be the dance of choice this evening.

Tomorrow we are supposed to go in for a blood draw to Covenant. This should be easy, depending on the weather. The CT scan is scheduled just 8 days from now. Please pray for a smaller tumor that has moved away from the involved blood vessels so resection is possible.