Status Update (Thurs 3/14)

Yesterday, Aria had her second spinal tap to test for leukemia cells, and another chemo treatment (and we were in the hospital anyway, how convenient!).

She was determined to walk down the thousand-yard-hallway to the playroom (after much professional disagreement as to whether she was well enough to do so).  When she got there, she sat briefly in a little car, looked around a bit, and then said she felt sick and needed to go lay back down. But she took the hundred tiny steps needed to get there on her own.

She will likely be there until -- or through -- the weekend.  It was only the common cold that necessitated oxygen a few days ago, and that likely triggered the brief fever that sent us back to the hospital after her mere eight-hour home stay.

But since she had no white blood cells, with a fever, and then more chemotherapy to kill any white blood cell that might have thought it had a snowball's chance, they want to keep her until her white count starts to rise again. The nurse clued me in that it usually takes a few days at minimum.

She's drawing up a storm, and they brought her in a teeny piano, and her hair looks like it's been through a tropical cyclone (no she is not wearing a bump-it).

She insisted on a hotdog for lunch--with mustard!--further damaging my nutritional credibility with the doctors. I really don't even know why she knows what a hotdog is, I swear!

She is calmer, happier, and more like herself. But she has stopped asking when she can go home.