Hello again,

My intentions are to give a brief update and go to bed so I will see how successful I am at that.  Sharmi is three days into her new chemo drugs.  So far she seems to be doing fairly well on them.  The nurse practitioner said they would start to hit her on Friday so we will see.

Her labs on Monday showed a huge increase in her white blood cells with an ANC of more than 10,000 (normal is 1500 to 5000).  This was a huge jump in her bodies recovery.  I am grateful that her body is strong enough to recover like that.  However, her red blood cells were low and they are projecting that she will need a transfusion or two in the next couple of weeks.  I know that transfusions are low risk, but she has enough risk already, so please pray that her body will be strong enough so that she won’t need a blood transfusion.  Unfortunately, they don’t have the same direct donor services up here like they did in San Diego, so we would have to pull from the general bank.

With her numbers being so high they did admit her on Tuesday to start this next phase of chemo.   She had her ups and downs throughout the day, but overall she did well.  It was a very long day.  We were there from 8:00 in the morning to 8:00 at night.  Grandma came to see us mid afternoon.  This gave her someone other than me to jump at her every request.  This of course pleased Sharmi and me. 

Since we have been going back to the hospital every day this week for chemo we have left her port accessed, so that they don’t have to stick the needle into her chest every day.  This is certainly more convenient once we get to the hospital and it avoids the trauma of poking her chest everyday, but Sharmi has been having a hard time with it at home.  It scares her just knowing it is there.  I have to keep it covered at all times.  I have put a little tank top under her shirts and pulled the tub over the top of it so that the tub doesn’t touch her skin and we can hide it between the two shirts.  This seems to help.  The first night I had her in zipper pj’s and she was a wreck every-time we had to take her to the potty (which was a lot thanks to the drugs and antibiotics), because she didn’t want her port exposed. 

Baths have also been out of the question since that requires taking her cloths off, but today I tricked her and I put her in her old baby bath tub on the counter.  She liked seeing herself in the mirror.  I left her shirts on and eventually got her clean enough.  Once the horsey shirt got wet I finally was able to change her shirts, but not without tears and crying.  Poor thing it must be scary.  She keeps saying, “no owies, just diaper”, “no owies just shirt”, ” no owies just…”  She will be getting the port taken out tomorrow for the weekend, and then they will put it back in on Monday for all of next week. 

OK.  My feet are swollen enough now and the doctor told me today that my body is ready to have this baby whenever she decides to come. I am starting to dialate and 70% thined.  (I am sure that is more information than some of you wanted to know.)  Good night, I am going to go and get some rest. 

Cheris