Out of 3 daughters Mimi is our middle child, older sister Iza by 3 minutes and a younger sister Magi by 3 years. Mimi was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) on August 12, 2009. After 2 years, 2 months and 26 days on November 6th, 2011 she took her last chemo pill and is considered OFF Treatment! This is our story of our journey through childhood cancer.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Routine Clinic Day.

We have been keeping quite busy the last two weeks. The fall season started with some summer heat and we made sure soak in all the sun before it gets too cold! The girls have been playing and loving soccer, it is so great watching them run around and enjoy being on the team. Miss Magi has started a mini pre-school just one day a week for a couple of hours but so far she loves it, her and her buddy Norah are now Big Girls!

Mimi was due for her monthly Vincristine today so she got her port accessed, blood drawn, chemo given. Mimi was seen by the PA, everything looked good, no complaints. She also mentioned we only have one more Spinal Tap before is off treatment! This is scary and exciting all at the same time...

Counts:
RBC 10.4
ANC 1800

Since I had all three very giggly girls with me I don't remember all the counts because I ran out of there pretty quickly. I did receive a phone call later on that day to increase one of her chemo doses to 100%. Mimi also started her Steroid week. She was an emotional a mess tonight, she was just sobbing over everything but decided on her own to go to bed early, she is currently sleeping in my bed.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Clinic Day.

Mimi had a quick clinic visit today just to check counts and adjust chemo dose. Her nightly 6-MP chemo is remaining at 75% and her weekly Methotrexate is at 75%

She is looking and feeling good.

WBC - 2.56
HGB - 10.3
PLT - 270
ANC - 1190

Saturday, September 10, 2011

GOLD Ribbon.

The Littlest Soldiers

The medals on our chests
Are port-a-caths for meds
Helmets won’t stay on
Cause no hair is on our heads.

Our weapons of destruction
We take every day
We fight the battle within us
While we struggle on to play.

We fight with honor and courage
No marine could do as well
We are only little children
Living in this hell.

So bring on the medals
The Purple Hearts of Wars
The Gold Cross, The Silver Star
To place upon our scars.

For We are the Children of Cancer
No one has fought so hard
But every day we struggle on
Our LIFE is our reward

~author unknown

Friday, September 9, 2011

Back to School and Fun!


Iza and Mimi are officially 1st graders! Above are pictures from their 3rd day of school. It rained the first two days and we were all still getting used to getting up early. So far they are loving school and I have not heard any complaints. Mimi was scared to go back to school, she was nervous about getting sick. She understands more than she ever did before, she knows getting sick lands her in the hospital.


The weather turned out beautiful on Friday so we set out on a spontaneous art filled adventure with some friends from school. A local college was holding a Family Art Night, the girls created abstract art from cardboard, it was really fun! Above the streets we saw a couple of hot air balloons that took of from a park near by. We walked around the galleries and searched around for some amazing sidewalk chalk art. Below are some of our favorites.




Later at night on the way home we drove to Look Park to see if the hot air balloons were still there. We drove in to the dark park and out in the field balloons were lighting up one after the other. It was amazing to watch. It was a great night!

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Clinic Day.

Just a quick finger prick blood draw today. To check Mimi's counts since she has restarted chemo, since counts came back okay her dose of her nightly chemo (Mercaptopurine) was increased to 100%. Her weekly Methotrexate chemo is still at 50% for now. She is feeling pretty good and bouncing back to herself, whatever this "thing" was it really tired her out.

Good counts + NO Fever = School!

ANC 1900

Friday, September 2, 2011

Mimi DOESN'T have Malaria.

In case anyone was wondering...

Hoping I am not jinxing myself here but fevers have not come back since Wednesday night. I even replaced the batteries in the thermometer to make sure it is working and that the 98.0 reading was correct.

Results from Wednesday's echo cardiogram came back normal. Her heart looks great.

Thursday was another busy day. We started of the day in the Nuclear Radiology department where Mimi received a nuclear injection and about three hours later we were to come back for a nuclear bone density scan. I had all the girls with me, which made Mimi happy to have her sisters with her. They were full of questions to the technician who was really good at answering them all. The scan itself took about 20 minutes, Mimi had to be very still. She did an awesome Job! We looked at the images after and thought it would have been great to get a print out of Mimi's skeleton for Halloween but unfortunately they don't do that. During the three hour wait we went for an appointment with the Infectious Diseases doctor (which really sounds worse than it is) she went over the last two weeks with me, and told me about all the tests that were done on Mimi all of which came back negative. She decided to test for some more one of them was Malaria, highly unlikely but at this point why not just check for everything. I just hope they are GONE. Her counts took a slight dip, probably due to chemo. Her CRP (C-Reactive Protein) is 4 down from 5, so it is going in the right direction.

We might not ever know what caused these high fevers for so long. Hopefully all the WORSE case scenarios were ruled out and this does NOT happen again.