March 16, 2006

Today Leah and I had another blood draw (finger poke) at Covenant. At first I thought that maybe we would not be able to get there since they forecast so much snow, but when I woke early this morning and saw no accumulation I knew we were out of luck. Leah handled this finger poke better than any other and talked right through it. Her platelets fall in the normal range, but are lower than normal, so we had to hold her finger for quite a while before getting to put a bandaid on them. It would seem that her platelets would begin to rise since her counts have bottomed out and are rising, but we shall see. Her other counts look good--we still have to do the GCSF shots, but her white counts went from .6 on Monday to 4.7 today. Her hemoglobin was 8.0 on Monday and 10.9 today. It is obvious she has much more energy. It was snowing big beautiful flakes on our way to Waterloo and back so when we got home we made some pumpkin bread and beef stew.

Leah also went through our mail and looked at all the new catalogs that came. She is a very, very good shopper. Finally as we are laying down for her nap and she is asking for outfit after outfit from the new Hannah Anderssen catalog, telling me how "honkin coot" things are on each page she turns to me and says, "these come in the mail, right?" I tell her that they do and she adds, "yeah, because if it comes in the mail we don't have to pay money for them." Sounds like a good idea to me.

Right now both she and Chloe are at Grandma Kathy and Grandpa Daryl's house. There was cookie baking to be done and Leah wanted to look at some of Grandma Kathy's digital photos on her computer. She was quite intent on this occurring tonight and I even had to call Grandma at school twice just to make sure and line things up.

I cannot believe that we are halfway through March- her scan is just over a week away and her surgery is 13 days from now. In some ways I want time to go quickly and in others I am enjoying this time we have when we can be "normal" (for us, anyway). We do not hear from people as much anymore, which is OK, but we do hope that you are continuing to pray for Leah--for a shrinking tumor and for a surgery that allows 100% resection of her tumor and for her spots in her lung to be removed as well---and for no other surprises to be revealed during surgery. We are thankful that she has felt well and continues to run around and giggle and act like herself this entire time. We are also thankful for the many people offering help in so many ways- meals that are delivered, cards that arrive in the mail to lift our spirits, and prayers that are offered up each and every day asking for Leah's healing. We certainly could not do this without this support. Please continue to remember us in your prayers as we move along on this journey.