Day +12

Textbook. This is not a word that you often aspire to hear about your child. Most parents will indulge in calling their child advanced or exceptional every once in a while but textbook isn't quite the same. Since we arrived at Children's hospital for the first time almost four months ago we have heard a lot of words like puzzling, mystery and rare or phrases like we've never seen that before, or how unusual. Today after rounds our attending transplant doc came to take a better look at Georgia as she had been sleeping when he'd come by before. Georgia was sitting on my lap playing, pointing, smiling. Our little girl has emerged from the wrath of transplant and we are seeing longer glimpses of her every day. After assessing her he said that he's very happy with her progress and looked at me... textbook he said, I know it's not something you hear very often when it's concerning Georgia but so far her transplant has been textbook. I looked back at him and said... well, it's our new German way.
Yesterday ended up being a bit of a mess with all of the infusions she had to get. She made it through platelets and the diuretic just fine then we moved on to the IVIG. At certain points during the infusion they up the rate at which its given, by the third upping Georgia started to break out in a rash... the exact same thing happened last time. The doc took a look and they decided to press on at the slower rate.. this turned our four hour infusion into a eight hour one. I closely monitored her skin and the rash started to change, she started coughing and was becoming more irritable, the night doc took a look... let's keep going. Finally about a half hour later Georgia was about to come out of her skin, itching her eyes so much they were swollen, finally we were told they would stop. Although better, her rash is still being closely monitored because it is so similar to signs of GVHD... this accompanied by her normal skin rash which is improving but far from gone complicates the picture. Overnight she got red blood cells which ended shortly before the morning nurse came in to tell me she would be getting platelets again... ugh, it's always something.
Through all of this Georgia has been such a trooper, I know she is sick and tired of having her blood pressure and temperature taken constantly and there is always someone who is looking her over for a rash or pushing on her belly. All for good reason, but who wants to be bothered round the clock? Today her ANC was up to 431 and the rest of her immune system numbers are coming in nicely. Last time we waited for her ANC it bounced around from 20 to zero and back up... this time we've started at full speed... must be an autobahn thing.