Second Round Down

A long day, but a good day. We went to the clinic early this morning to prepare for Georgia's second round of treatment. First, the nurse had to access her port-a-cath to draw blood and administer her IV medicine. The cool thing about the port is that the nurses can access and deaccess it with ease, and it saves her from getting a million pokes! Everyone had a good chuckle at Mommy's expense because I might have put a bit too much numbing cream on her chest before we left home. Well, I'm learning!

Our awesome "hem-onc" (hematology-oncology) doc, Dr. Neff, was pretty busy this morning, so we switched up the schedule, and Georgia got her IV medicine before her other procedures. Her blood counts were great - her Hemoglobin count was even back up in the normal range. Dr. Neff said the two units of blood she got before leaving the hospital really "juiced" her up! With treatment, we know that her counts will go up and down, but it was nice to hear the word "normal" about something.

We had to wait quite a while before Georgia's procedures over at DCH Day Surgery, and the only problem with that was she was starving! The steroid regimen usually increases your appetite anyway, plus she had to stop food and liquids at midnight last night to prepare for surgery, so by 1 pm, you can imagine how hungry she was! And as a show of solidarity in the name of the Peachy Keens, Trevor and I were also fasting. And starving. Which was only made worse when we turned on the television after yet another delay and were treated with a parade of food commercials! We even saw one for appetizers for your cat - come on! But finally, it was our turn, and, in about 30 minutes, Georgia sailed through without any problems.

So now we wait. In our first biopsy last Thursday, there were 60% leukemia cells in the bone marrow, and we're hoping that today's biopsy shows less than 5% - amazing that it can go down that far that fast, but it's possible! If so, Georgia won't need another biopsy until the all-important Day 29, when we want that percentage to be ZERO! If it hasn't gone down that much this time, we'll check again next Friday. The good news is, we know her spinal fluid was clear of leukemia cells last week and this week, so it seems the bad cells are limited to the bone marrow, and we shouldn't have anymore spinal taps after today. But she'll continue with various intrathecal chemotherapy medicines (injected into the spinal fluid) throughout treatment. We should get some results from today's biopsy early next week, so everybody think LOW numbers!

As usual, Georgia inspired and amazed all of the doctors and nurses we saw today. They can't believe how much she can - and wants to - participate in her care. I'm no doctor - I chose law school over medical school because of all that math : ( - but I don't think you have many peds patients helping take their own blood and access their ports! She continues to tolerate everything very well, but her back is pretty sore after today's round of pokes. We'll take it easy this weekend, and see what news next week brings.

Again, we SO appreciate everyone's kind words and prayers - keep it up! The more you spread the word, the more support we get, and the more we can all help our girl. We're looking into some other ways to share Georgia's journey like blood drives, bone marrow registration drives, and rubber LIVESTRONG-type bracelets. We're also going to visit her classroom via Skype, so hang on Parkside friends, she's coming soon! And if you have any other ideas about how we can share her story and hopefully help other kids with ALL and other childhood cancers, let us know.

Also, as a housekeeping matter, we have Comment Moderator turned on to avoid comment spam - they find you everywhere! So, if you leave a comment and don't see it right away, check back because we just haven't published it yet. That said, the wireless at the hospital and the clinic isn't always so reliable, so we may have lost a few before we could get to them. If it's been more than a day or so, and you still don't see your comment, repost it - we're not rejecting it! :)

Thank you, thank you, thank you - and lots of Georgia love to all of you!