Good News!! Day 12

Tyler called me at home this morning just after I had dropped the kids off at school, I had been up since 4:00 a.m.  I just couldn't sleep so I decided to start my day early, nothing productive came from it, until of course I received Tyler's call delivering the news I so desperately wanted to hear, but surely wasn't expecting so soon.  Alice's ANC is 200 today!!

This is a shock for us and for the doctors.  I wasn't sure if what I was believing was really true, could it be?  It's only day 12 and she is already showing sings of engraftment.  It's possible that she could engraft over the weekend or into the beginning of next week.  This is much sooner than we anticipated.

Honestly I get teary every time I think about it.  I feel like crying really hard because I am so happy and relieved.  The fact that she is already producing white blood cells is huge.  This means sores will begin to heal, even in the next three days we will notice a difference in her pain levels.  If I could describe my feelings right now in a familiar setting, it would be like a child anticipating Christmas morning, or driving into the Disneyland parking lot....times ten.  I am SO EXCITED, We are SO EXCITED!!

I switched places with Tyler today as planned; when I saw the nurse practitioner, I had to ask more questions because I just wanted to talk about the good news in more detail.  Her doctors feel like it's happening so fast because she received a very healthy dose of stem cells from the donor...the donation was considered "packed" with stem cells.

Today was good, despite the fact that Alice spent most of the day grumpy.  Little things were making her mad easily today.  When Irish our nurse came in to tell me that we needed to change her dressing today, I thought, oh my, she is already so upset, this is not going to be good--well Kevin and the Burchalls came to say hello...just in time.  When Alice heard that they had arrived, she requested that Kevin hold her hand during the dressing change.  He told her stories of the crazy Turkey he had growing up, it seemed to work quite well.

She had a lot of fun and even laughed plenty with her visitors...it changed the rest of the day for the better.  I tried to capture some of the fun in the video.  If you listen carefully she says the word idiot.  She called me a little idiot today.  I was surprised, and I don't think she even knows what it means, she heard it on Despicable Me.  We had a little chat about using better words, but it still gave us a giggle.

Lisy

                                                                  

Britta, Alena, Seth, Kevin, Lori, Sydney, Alice and Kate.

She sat this way for a while, it was probably just easier to leave the tissue in her nose rather than continue to wipe it...don't we all know what that is like.