Hannah's Test Site

I have marked our chemo schedule as DONE WITH ROUND 4! We just received the all clear to go home and we'll leave around 4pm, when she is done with hydration. This round has gone very well for us, nothing crazy to report and we love that! She is tired and a bit run down, as a product of the chemo, but that is much easier to deal with than the nausea and vomitting.

She will have a lot of work to do with physical and occupational therapy when she gets home. Whenever she has her port accessed, she walks humped over with her left shoulder slumped way down, like a little old lady because she says it hurts to stand up straight and pull her shoulders back. After 6 days of walking like that, I know she'll need some time to adjust back again. She also doesn't really use her left hand or arm when accessed. Her arm is almost glued to the side of her body, again because of the port. She asked me if we could "make a deal" that while she was in the hospital and accessed that she could walk like that, and after she was deaccessed, she would stand up straight again. I think she was tired of Dave and I always telling her to stand up straight. So I made the deal with her. She is working with occupational therapy right now. She is working on 2 birthday cards for BT (brain tumor) kids whose parents are trying to get cards from every state for their birthday, pretty cool and she is enjoying that. Physical therapy came yesterday but said she needs more OT while in the hospital because she is doing so well with physical therapy that she is really out of their league! They really focus on kids that can't walk at all, or really have trouble with very basic things like sitting up, walking, etc.

So we are all packed and set to leave. Only one "black cloud" hanging and that is Hannah has to start on her neupogen shots before we leave the hospital to help elevate her counts. The doctor automatically started her on them this time, rather than waiting for her counts to go so low that she gets an infection again. Once she heard that, she was pretty mad because she hates those shots. I will have to continue them at home, at least through our next clinic visit which is Tuesday of next week.

Thanks again for your thoughts and prayers. xoxo Kim