Upcoming Treatments

Happy New Year everyone.  After Isabella’s blood counts showed improvement to a satisfactory level last week, we made an impromptu trip to Vermont to visit Julianne’s parents.  We spent a quiet New Years up there before heading back down to CT on Sunday.  Isabella was scheduled to have another blood draw on Monday, then if the levels were at normal levels, would begin a second round of chemotherapy on Tuesday.  This also gave Isabella a chance to have a day at school, which she was very excited (and nervous) about.

Unfortunately, Isabella’s platelet counts were still a bit low to start chemo.  So our doctor told us to wait a couple days to allow the platelets to recover further, have another blood draw on Wednesday, then expect to start chemo on Thursday. 

In the meantime, we told the doctor that we noticed that some of Isabella’s symptoms have gotten worse, which worried us all.  Again, we changed plans and instead of doing a blood draw on Wednesday, we will be getting an MRI on Thursday (they originally didn’t have an MRI scheduled until after this second round of chemo).  They are most likely checking to see if there is any tumor progression that is causing the worsening of the symptoms.  If that is the case, they will most likely not proceed with this round of chemo because they wouldn’t want to subject Isabella to the severe effects of the chemo with little to no benefit.  If the tumor does show at least stable, then we will proceed with the treatment.

One bright side to all this is that Isabella will be able to spend a couple more days at school, which she really enjoys.  The picture below shows Isabella and Nathaniel taking a walk with Grandma and Grandpa.