Isabella Update for Saturday

All of Isabella's blood counts are now back to normal. Her neutrophils (white cells), platelets, and hemoglobin are all at normal levels, after being at alarmingly low levels a couple days ago when she was having multiple, severe bloody noses. The only medication she is now on is the antibiotics to treat the infected port, and that will continue for another week.

Her right hand also continues to improve as she stretches it out and exercises it every day. She also uses it more and more on a day to day basis, for instance, she holds her cards while we play Super-Duper-Shmooper-Fooper-Cooper-Hooper-8's.

She'll probably stay here on the Pediatric floor for the next week, since she will start her next chemo cycle a week from today (Saturday, January 10). We would like to send her back to Rusk for a few days of physical therapy before chemo, but the insurance company seems to be balking about her moving back and forth between the pediatric floor and rehab. (It's amazing how much say the insurance companies have on determining the care that patients receive, but that rant is for another day.) So hopefully, she'll go back to rehab after the first couple days of chemo.

Isabella also remains in good spirits. Just yesterday, representatives from the movie studios came by and provided DVDs of The Tale of Desperaux to watch. (They were very strict on the distribution and required the DVDs be returned immediately after we were finished watching.) We play cards and Candyland. Her hair continues to thin and fall out. We think more hair would be out but it's still a pretty big mess in braids and giant knots. Julianne will probably cut the braids off and the rest of her hair will fall out. Isabella is surprisingly upbeat about her hair falling out. We keep joking that when she's completely bald, we'll paint a blue arrow on her head so that she looks like Ang, from Avatar, the Last Airbender.