We're Home...with Pictures!

Wow it is so nice to be home!! Izzy was feeling so well and eating/drinking accordingly, that they unhooked her from her IV/Med pole for much of yesterday. This means playing on the 8th floor balcony playstructure, walking to the gift shop with Chrstine (see pics), and showing all the nurses and doctors how cute she is trying to run down the hall with atrophied muscles. So they said we could go and she started bawling "I don't wanna go home!" Here are some great pictures and accompanying descriptions:

Not so happy about the fully awake CT-scan.


Quite happy about the cute little x-ray chair (checking for throat absess, etc).





















Extremely happy about the 2 kitties Christine insisted on buying her.

Findings

A quick note...we have all breathed a little sigh of relief hoping we have found out the cause to Izzy's articulation issues. The Vincristine (chemo) she has been getting for the last 2 months has a really rare side effect (they had to dig to find evidence of) in which temporary nerve damage can happen in her neck--the same nerve that controls the soft pallett on the top of her mouth which explains exatly what the speach pathologists are seeing with her examinations. So...it could last 3 months or a few weeks. The waiting game again, but at least we have an idea of what it is. Phew! The upside, we get to play charades non-stop :) Thanks for your prayers.

In the Hospital

We are back at Mott 7 (aka cancer floor of the Children's Hospital) thanks to a fever and a really weird speach impediment that all started Friday and progressively got worse over the weekend. The fever is not a huge thing--they expect a few of them when she is "neutrapenic" (blood counts at rock-bottom). It is protocol to admit her for 48 hours and make sure nothing grows on the cultures they draw.

But the speach issue has everybody stumped. I can't describe it very well, so bear with me. She is no longer able to say her p's t's b's c's...ok everything except the m, n, and ing that come out her nose. I can't understand her for the most part. So they did a neck x-ray, cat scan, and an MRI--worst case scenario would be a mini-stroke due to the PEG Asparaginase (chemo) causing clotting issues with her blood. Luckily the tests all came back with no huge indication that this is the case.

So we are waiting and watching. Meanwhile kicking back in Izzy's home away from home (the same room we were in at her initial diagnosis) watching movies and eating cheetos. The nurses all come in vying for Izzy's shift and remind her how lucky her parents are to have such a beautiful and sweet girl. She is an amazing little angel.

Last of Consolidation

So Izzy and I are holding down the fort this week (this is Kerri for the first time--w00t!). She knows it's her time to have me all to her own, so Tuesday after dropping off the others at the airport she made me stop for hot chocolate and later she suggested dining in at Cottage Inn Pizza. She's runnin' the show like the Leukemia Princess she is :)

On Monday I noticed some blood on the side of Izzy's mouth. When I looked there were a bunch of bright red (what looked like) sores all over in there. Come to find out, it was petechiae from her platelet counts being so low. Luckily not mouth sores as we have heard they are very painful (those are a common symptom with the next phase starting in July). So she ended up getting a platelet transfusion as well as a blood transfusion (which we suspected according to her energy level) as her other counts were about 0 too. The docs assured me this is normal at the end of Consolidation...

Which leads me to yeah!!! almost halfway through the intense 6 1/2 months!! We are keeping our fingers crossed that those counts recover (which we will check 3 more times in the next week) so that we can go to Idaho and Utah for about 10 days starting on the 23rd. If it happens it will feel like a really great dream. So chant with me now...NO FEVERS! HIGH COUNTS!....NO FEVERS! HIGH COUNTS!

Family Pictures

Izzy is back on schedule with her chemo and almost out of the consolidation phase. The next phase starting in a couple of weeks will be another induction phase that will have her going to the clinic every 10 days for chemo as opposed to every 7 days.

Her hair and spirits are still hanging in there like champs. We continue to feel so grateful for how well she is doing and the great support with which we are surrounded. However, we still have our bad days. We can definitely describe the last few months as the best of times and the worst of times.

We'll be working with a new change in a couple of weeks as I begin my internship in Dallas for six weeks. Family in Utah and Idaho will be taking Lorin and Ryan there for the first four weeks; and then family and friends will be coming to Ann Arbor for the last two weeks to help.

We took some family and Izzy pictures about a week ago that I've posted below. The girls, including Kerri, look amazing.