Sophie's World

9:15 PM: We had another good day today. We got the results of Sophe's blood test back today, and her counts are definitely going up. her ANC is up to .6, which is high enough to allow us to resume most of our activities (we'll probably keep her home from day care for the rest of the week just to be safe), but it's not quite high enough to resume her chemo. They want her to be above 1.0 before starting up again. That's been fine with us. One of the pills she usually takes has to be given on an empty stomach, so we usually have to make her stop eating after 7:00 and give it to her at bedtime. It's been wonderful not to have to say no when she's hungry after 7:00. And this child has been hungry. She has been totally obsessive about Lay's potato chips ever since she was in the hospital. She ate two large (11.5 ounce) bags during the week she was in the hospital, plus she ate a small bag of them at every lunch and dinner (the large bag was for snacks between meals!). We bought two big bags mid-day Monday, and she's nearly done with the second bag already. We just put both girls to bed a little while ago, and Sophie just called out and said, "Hey! We forgot to do our prayering!" So Randall went in there and prayed with her. When they were done, Randall gave her kisses, and she told him to tell me I need to sneak in there and kiss her little noggin (which I did).

T'yanna update:
Melissa says T'yanna is feeling much better now that she has had the colostomy. Melissa said she was on huge amounts of morphine before, but it wasn't having much effect on her pain. The poor girl has had some sort of surgery every day this week since Sunday, but it sounds like they've taken care of everything surgical for now. She's feeling much better today (and I could really hear the relief in Melissa's voice). They'll be starting chemo in the next day or two and will hope to begin shrinking the tumor. She said if it appears to be having an effect, they may be able to go home soon. She said they may do some radiation on a part of the tumor that has grown down into her leg (which is what was causing her leg pain the last couple of weeks), but they don't want to do radiation on her abdomen (maybe because it's not as effective if the particular area has already had radiation--I didn't totally understand that part). Melissa has a very positive attitude, and she says she refuses to believe that there's no hope--the power of prayer is too strong. Her doctor is doing a nationwide search for protocols and treatments that might be effective in T'yanna's situation, so the doctors certainly aren't giving up on her either.