Low Counts Again

I don't know if I will ever be able to start a blog post again without apologizing for it being so long since the last update. Apparently I am pretty burnt out on blogging, it is just really low on my priority list. Sierra had her 6th to last round of chemo on Friday the 14th of September. She normally would've gotten two chemos together over 2 days, but she has had her limit of the cisplatin, so was only given a 15 minute injection of Doxorubicin 24 hrs apart. Some kids are allowed to do this chemo as outpatient, since it is such a quick injection, but Sierra's oncologist wanted to be sure that she wouldn't have any issues with nausea, so we were inpatient. I think she would've handled doing this chemo as outpatient just fine though because she had no trouble with it at all. She was given the second dose on Saturday and they sent us home right afterward. She went to 3 full days of school this week and then was sent home on Thursday with a low fever, it wasn't even over 100 degrees, so I wasn't too worried about it. Friday she had a clinic visit scheduled around noon and when I took her to that appointment she actually had a fever of 100.5, which meant no playroom for her, and she was admitted because her counts were bottoming out. Her ANC was at 20 and her red blood cells were borderline for a transfusion. Besides having low energy she has been feeling really good, even with the low counts. She was given a red blood cell transfusion early this morning, and her ANC was up in the 60's so even though I thought her counts were still on the way down, maybe they will just recover more swiftly since she had only one chemo instead of 2. The doctor today said she may be able to go home in the next day or 2, so we will just have to see how her counts look tomorrow.

On another note, I know people have been wondering how Sierra's scans went last week. I had spoken to a doctor about them, but it wasn't Sierra's actual oncologist so I wanted to speak to him first and have a fully clear understanding of the scans before I posted anything. Her bone scan is looking clear, she has no areas that light up anywhere else in her body, so that is a very good sign. Her chest CT is where the concern is for now. Sierra has some small nodules in her lungs which could be osteosarcoma. She had 3 very small nodules at her first chest CT that was done in March, but we were told that since they were only 2mm that we would just watch them, she had more scans in June, and apparently had 3 more 2mm nodules, though I was under the impression that they were the same 3 nodules, apparently I was misinformed. With these newest scans it appears that one of the nodules may now be 4mm, which is still incredibly small and could only "look" bigger because of how the slicing is done for the scans. So for now we are looking at finishing the chemo regimen she is on and then having a lung surgery to remove any nodules that show up on scans that will be done when her treatment is finished. This is obviously a scary thing, lung surgery seems incredibly huge compared to all we have been through so far, but we are hoping that if nodules do remain that they will be anything but osteosarcoma, or maybe that at least it would be dead osteosarcoma with no living cells. Sierra doesn't know about any of this yet, so please don't say anything to the kids about it, and please start praying that the spots will go away and that we can avoid this whole thing altogether. We are always hopeful that everything will turn out well, and have faith that Sierra will be just fine.

On a lighter note, here is a cute pic from last week when some Rodeo Princesses came to visit the hospital, Sierra was all smiles.