Her Numbers Are....

Up!  Way up!!!  Her neutraphils needed to be at 750 or higher by yesterday to continue treatment and start the next phase.  They had been well below 750 for the last five weeks.  Last Friday (the day of her bone marrow biopsy) she was at around 300 so there was really no way to know how long it would take her body to get those numbers up. Well, yesterday her neutraphils were over 3,000!  Her bone marrow was working like crazy this past week to sky rocket those numbers and we had been praying so specifically this week that her numbers would make a huge comeback by yesterday so we could get this phase going.  We were amazed when the doctor came in smiling and doing a drum roll and said that they were over 3,000!  

So, yesterday she started this phase which is called Interim Maintenance.  She got two doses of chemo.  The one is vincristine which I had talked about in a post a while back. Some of the side effects are joint and bone pain and this is the one that causes her to loose her hair.  She had this several times the first month and seemed to tolerate it well.  The other chemo is methotrexate and yesterday was the first time she has gotten this one by IV (this is the same chemo that she gets during her spinal taps). The side effects that are most common with this medication are nausea/vomiting, loss of appetite and mouth sores or sores all along her digestive tract :(.  They gave her an anti nausea medication before giving her the methotrexate and told us that we could give her a dose at home last night if needed.   She seems to be handling what she get yesterday very well.  She has been playful and not complaining of anything so we are so relieved that she is doing so well with the first treatment of this new phase.  Every 10 days we will go back for the next 40 days and each time, as long as her numbers are up enough they will increase the amount of methotrexate that she is given.  The more she gets, they said the more common the side effects are so they told us that they usually don't see any of the sores until they get further in the phase.  Some kids don't get them at all so of course that is our prayer for her.  I can't imagine how horrible that would be to go through with her, so we are praying for her body to handle this phase with none of these yucky side effects.  Today has been a good day.  We feel good to be back on track and are so thankful that she is smiling, playing and acting normal.  Here is a picture that I snapped of her today.  Our little trooper :)