Little Brothers Are Great

On Monday, Catherine officially completed Delayed Intensification!!! Now we just wait for her ANC to reach 750 and her platelets 75,000 and then we start Long Term Maintenance. On Monday Catherine's ANC dropped to 189 and her hemoglobin was 8.5 - her platelets were all of 29,000. Not a great number, but they decided to hold off on a transfusion as she did not exhibit any weird bruising. They scheduled us to come back in on Wednesday to check the platelets again. But why wait until then?? On Tuesday morning, I left Catherine and Alex playing alone in the basement while I ran upstairs to get something. When I came down, Catherine was crying while Alex was hitting her over the head like a drum with a toy in each hand. With each hit to the head a bruise showed up instantaneously. It was a scary site to behold, but I stayed relatively calm. I called the doctor and they said to come up for the platelet transfusion. So, I dropped Alex off with my friend Lynne, and began the drive first to Yale New Haven Hospital to pick up the platelets and then up to Guilford. While there, her counts revealed that she would probably need another platelet transfusion and a red blood cell transfusion by Friday. They told me to expect tranfusions during this phase but you always hope you might not need one, particularly a blood transfusion as it take 4 hours to get one. So between the blood and platelets, Catherine and I expect to be in Guilford for about 6 hours on Friday. As crazy as yesterday was, I had to laugh as Catherine and Alex are great playmates for each other and the hitting and pushing are typical among siblings, but in this case instead of an icepack to make her feel better and a timeout for Alex, she gets platelets and he gets a great playdate.

As an aside, seeing the kids get transfusions all the time always reminds me of how important it is to donate blood and platelets. Our family has been advised to not do so until she is 5 years into remission (they don't want her to build antibodies against our blood in the event she needs a bone marrow transplant). So, if you see a blood drive happening in your town, PLEASE stop by and donate. And, if you're really brave, donate bone marrow to the general registry, you could truly give someone a second chance at life if you end up being a match.