All Dressed Up - Nowhere to Go

Actually... lots of places we'd like to go, but we can't right now. Abbey put this outfit on yesterday when we got home from the clinic and she looked so cute. I so wanted to take her out and share her cuteness, but know we will be homebound for a while now. Then I thought "all my blogger friends can see her :)" so here she is.... Our brave little warrior, continuing to truck on and beat this disease. We love this girl so much!!

Yesterday we went to the clinic, but not for chemo :). They looked at her blood to see where her numbers were and how she's handling the last treatment in the last phase. Her ANC which is the infection fighting part of her WBC is low. It is at 800, which means she is borderline neutrapenic and pretty succeptible to infection right now. So, we won't be taking her out of the house again until her next treatment day, which is next Thursday. Her other numbers looked really good so we are praying that her ANC is on it's way up and will be way up by next Thursday. The higher it is when she starts the next phase, the better.

She also had her echocardiogram and that went well. She was very patient and laid still while the tech did it. I was super proud of her. We are waiting for the doctor to call us today with the results, but feel confident that her heart is doing good. At this point they weren't expecting to see anything wrong, but just want to check it before starting the next round of chemo.

Jacob and I are both fighting off colds right now, which really stinks since she is borderline neutrapenic. We are washing our hands like crazy and wiping down the house continually. This is the first cold that's been in our house all winter, so we are doing everything we can so Abbey doesn't get it. I am the biggest baby when I have a cold! I always tell Jim that I'd rather break my arm then not be able to breathe out of my nose when I sleep. I know it's a little extreme, but I am miserable with a cold. Some of Abbey's "toughness" needs to rub off on me!

The last thing I want to share is how we have seen God's hand in many little things lately. A few days ago I was feeling down and discouraged as I looked ahead to these next two months, and that same day I got two things in the mail from friends with amazing encouragement and a phone call from another friend. God knew I needed that on that exact day and for that I was thankful. I love to love people by words of encouragement and that is also how I feel loved. Thank you so much friends (you know who you are :) for your words. Not only was I encouraged, but also was reminded of how intimately involved God is in this situation.

I also have been praying for some time now that God would show us how we could use this situation in others lives for His glory. As I washed dishes the other day and sang my heart out to some of my favorite Christian songs, I had this idea that I really felt like is from God. The night Abbey was diagnosed we laid in our room the whole night, just looking at our sweet baby sleep and having so many fears, questions and unknowns. It was a night that everyone of you parents can imagine and it was the hardest night of our lives. I so wished that I could talk to another mom that's been there. Another mom who has been shocked by those same words and who has been on this journey, with a healthy child in the end. Down the road, when this chapter of our lives is over, I'd so love to be that mom that they call when there is a new diagnosis, for that new mom and family, to talk to. I want to be available, no matter what time of day or night it is, to head to Rainbow 2, to hug that mom, pray with her and listen and tell them our story. Our doctors and nurses have been amazing since day one, but there were so many things that we had no idea what to expect and would have loved to talk to a mom whose been down this same road. So, although we still are on this journey and have a ways to go, I was so excited about what the future holds and how God is going to use our situation for years to come. I also was thinking that Abbey will have to be healthy and cancer free for me to be able to do this :) So, I think God was also reassuring me that we will get there!!!