Happy IS Healthy!

If Jade's at home, she is sans pants 90 percent
of the time... Not sure why.

We have been so thankful for these four fever-free, glorious days at home of -- hiding and seeking, painting, wii fitting, line dancing, perfecting our silly faces, waking up on our own volition, catching up on Saturday morning cartoons, reading stories with big brother and embellishing on them afterwards to make our own, bonding with new pet fish.  Jade's bald head and central line bandaging are the only tell-tale signs of the leukemia that she is fighting once again. She has been bounding through the house after her brother (much to his dismay), ambushing Mommy with big brother and snoballs in hand, and doing the cha-cha slide like there's no tomorrow.

She is so happy.
And when she's happy, we are happy.
And happy is healthy.

I was reminded of this by another brave family whose five-year-old is beginning her third battle with cancer. Sometimes I lose sight of that and obsess about numbers and counts.  But Jade's happiness really is more important; a good report from the lab is comforting, but Jade's liveliness, her spirit is what really energizes us... And we have been plenty energized these past few days!

Armed with the knowledge from the doctors that treating relapsed AML is more difficult than treating regular AML, we went back to CNMC today for a scheduled lumbar puncture (spinal tap) with intrathecal chemotherapy, and bone marrow biopsy and aspiration. Still hopeful. Still faithful.  The lumbar puncture tests Jade's spinal fluid to determine if the leukemia is present there; it also gives an opportunity to inject "just-in-case" chemo to prevent or kill any leukemia that might be present.  Jade's lumbar punctures have always been negative, even back in 2012, so we pray this continues to be the case. The bone marrow biopsy will let us know how effective the chemo has been.  The preliminary results from the biopsy show 2% blasts in her bone marrow.  Blasts are immature, blood-forming cells; anything less than 5% is considered normal.   This is reason to celebrate, but we still need to wait up to 48 hours for the more detailed analysis of the blasts to determine whether they are normal or leukemic.

Lord, let these 2% blasts be normal cells, the kind that are found in recovering bone marrow. That was my prayer when we got the results, will be my prayer tonight, and hopefully yours too.  Thanks for all of your support and encouragement... Off to enjoy more time with the kiddies -- we are scheduled to be together until Monday (after Mother's Day!!), when Jade will be readmitted for the second round of chemo.  

Today's Counts:
Hemoglobin: 9.4
Platelets: 171
ANC: 930 

Saturday Morning Cartooning