A Month and a Half Down and 4 and a Half Months Left of Intense Chemo

Sorry it has been a little while. As you can imagine we had a lot going on. After one of the toughest weeks we have had--3 trips to the ER and finally admitted for a few days all for a fever and a totally-understandable, Izzy, emotional thermal meltdown at the cancer clinic last Tuesday and me finishing up my 7-week long project at school--we used some of the moneys that have been donated to call in the reinforcements and flew Kerri's sister in to stay for a couple of weeks. Thank you to Traci who flew in this time and all of the family members that have come to visit and help and those that have made it so they could.

Izzy's chemotherapy these past couple of weeks has involved us administering chemo at home by mouth and through her port. It is a singular experience injecting poison directly into your daughter's bloodstream from the comfort of your home. Now that she is getting chemo everyday in some shape or form her hair is getting more sparse but still hanging in there like a champ.

As the title of the post suggests, we have completed about a month and a half of the intense part of her chemo protocol; and we have four and a half months left of heavy chemo dosing. She is getting big doses every Tuesday at the clinic and currently blood draws and usually blood transfusions on Fridays. Again, because of all of the chemo her blood counts are dropping quickly. However, strangely enough she is more herself than she has been since her diagnosis. She is riding her bike again with the other girls and gets moving pretty good with a cute shuffling run.

She has lost a lot of weight through the process which you can really see in her skinny little legs. To give you an idea of how dramatic the weight loss has been, she currently weighs 28 pounds at 3 and a half years old. Her little sister Ryan who is of average weight for her age of one year weighs 20 pounds. Izzy and Ryan are separated by a mere 8 pounds. When they wrestle Izzy has to work hard to overpower her. It's pretty funny.

Here is a recent picture of Izzy and Ryan and their cousin Carter.