Sophie's World

12:25 PM Well, for those of you locally, you know that Sophie had a terrible, terrible cough last weekend. By Sunday, we were convinced that we would be taking her to UNC on Monday. By Monday morning, however, Sophie's cough improved dramatically, so much so that although I kept her home from school, she seemed on the mend. It seemed to me the first time in a long time that Sophie has been able to fight off an infection like that on her own strength. By Wednesday, she was back at school and everything was just fine.

Yesterday, however, she complained of an earache and was clearly not feeling well. Susan called UNC and they agreed that since we were dealing with a likely ear infection, we could just take her to Urgent Care locally and get a prescription for antibiotics. Susan spent the better part of the day yesterday doing just that. Later in the afternoon (after the all-day Urgent Care and pharmacy trip), Sophie felt worse and worse and eventually spiked a fever. By about 7pm, we were making plans to take her to UNC. Susan got her to UNC, and the bloodwork came back late last night--Sophie's ANC (the measure of her immune system that we tend to watch carefully) had dropped to 0.3 (they prefer it to be above 1.0). Maybe because of the series of infections, or maybe because the doctors upped Sophie's chemo drugs ever-so-slightly, she's now officially "neutropenic," which means she's highly susceptible to pick up everything and anything. All of that means that Sophie was admitted to UNC late last night and will stay for at least another day. We thought we were through all of this uncertainty, but clearly we are not!

Our church has its Christmas Program tonight, so Elisabeth and I are hanging out at home until that's done and then we'll trek up to Chapel Hill. Susan will bring Elisabeth back and I'll spend the night up there. It's not entirely clear what we're looking for as far as Sophie's eventual release date might be, but we know that she'll need to get some stronger counts on her ANC--the next check won't come until tomorrow morning, and, ideally, she'll be fever-free before she gets released as well. She's on IV antibiotics right now with tylenol to keep her comfortable. Unfortunately, there isn't much the doctors can do for Susan, or me, or Elisabeth--we all just have to wait! Please pray for us all.