One Year in Remission!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!! For those of you keeping track, today marks the official anniversary of Catherine being in remission. According to Dr. Joe, Catherine will be considered cured if she remains in remission through March 17, 2011. I know there are others who would say that the day would need to be April 21, 2013 (5 years off treatment), but I like Dr. Joe's date better! Yesterday was the third time I had to drive up to Guilford in horrific weather: 3 weeks ago when Theresa Grandma came along, we had torrential downpours here that nearly put Darien under water (one of my friends needed to be rescued from her home!); last week there was this ever so slight snowfall that seemed to wreak havoc on I-95 and there were many accidents; yesterday it snowed again. The ride up wasn't bad, but the ride home took 90 minutes and the roads were terrible. I just now finished shovelling all the ice off our driveway. I'd like to give Dave credit for shovelling out the front part of the driveway and de-icing the cars, but he isn't the perfectionist that I am at snow removal. As a matter of fact, Dave is enjoying his St. Paddy's Day with his buddies in the City; Alex is napping; and Catherine is watching TV although she shoveled a little and then took her beach chair and an unbrella along with another beach chair for her Sheepy and watched me. Oh, and she was drinking lemonade. You would have thought it was summertime the way she lounged!
Yesterday's visit went well. Her hemoglobin has finally been hit by her cold, but her Retic number was good so Dr. Joe wasn't concerned (that just means her body is producing some red blood cells). The thing he is worried about, if you even want to say worried, is that she can't seem to kick her cold. Her lymphocytes have been very low the past 6 weeks which would be a good thing as those were the part of her white blood cells that were cancerous (thus the name acute lymphocytic or lymphoblastic leukemia), however, these are also the part of your white blood cells that fight viruses and she can't do that. Dr. Joe sent out some bloodwork to check her IgG levels (immunoglobulins which are protein molecules produced by B cells as a primary immune defense, each molecule and its clones having a unique binding site that can combine with the complementary site of a foreign antigen, as on a virus or bacterium, thereby disabling the antigen and signaling other immune defenses. ). If this number is low, they will have to give her an IgG transfusion. She had this last year when she was hospitalized for a fever and couldn't seem to kick that virus. Dr. Joe is going to call me and let me know if I need to come in for it. She has a temp of 99.1 so I am kind of hoping she gets the transfusion and we kick this cold for good!
Interesting tidbits from my ever observant daughter: "We haven't seen Dr. MJ in a while, where do you think she is?" I never told Catherine that she was leaving. I figured the news of Dr. Elisha and Dr. Darryl's departures were enough and we didn't see Dr. MJ a lot so I didn't think she'd notice. Wrong!! But I just tell her the truth, that Dr. MJ is hanging with her kids. Catherine said she wants to be a Mommy and a blood doctor just like Dr. MJ. I'd love that!! She was also very excited to hear that we got an e-mail from Dr. Elisha who is settling into his new home in Israel. He is trying to convince people to visit him and says that it is very beautiful there. I told him that Dave and I would visit when we run the Amazing Race! Catherine asked me if he was Irish (they have been learning about St. Patrick in school). I told her no, but said that Dr. Joe was and we should wish him a happy day.
As always, thanks for all your support and enjoy St. Patrick's Day!