The Partial Update

Despite only having two days of tests last week, the days felt long and my stress level was creeping up. Tuesday morning started with a blood draw at the SCCA, we only do blood draws at the SCCA when required and this day reminded me why. We checked in and were called back shortly after, the woman was very nice, so nice that I knew she wasn't comfortable doing blood draws on little kids. After what I would describe as the worst two blood draws on record, I had a very upset little girl and I was fuming from the unnecessary trauma. We both did our best to get past our feelings and made our way to the transplant floor. I'm happy to report that Georgia got an A+ on her physical exam. We brought her doctor bag (which is actually a vet bag) complete with a stethoscope which Georgia used on the doctor. She passed all of the GVHD exercise tests and left the appointment smiling after showing her docs how well she can run up and down the hall... per their request. Thursday we were back at the SCCA for oral medicine and nutrition. Georgia shows no signs of GVHD in her mouth and although transplant can delay dental development, we won't really know if this will impact Georgia for several years. Next up, nutrition, this used to be such a stressful appointment, but I knew going in Georgia is doing well. In fact, Georgia has grown 7cm since October!! She now sits nicely in the 50th percentile for both height and weight, how very average... a description that feels amazing! Between needing a feeding tube to gain weight and barely ranking on the charts, Georgia's body has certainly been working hard to make up for lost time. As we were finishing up this appointment the dietician said she would call me about one of her labs, I told her we'd be back for our conference in the morning when she gave me a puzzled look and asked, "are you sure?" As it turns out, our doctor is currently the inpatient attending which means he is at Children's Hospital, not the SCCA. They had rescheduled our review conference for February 8th. I was so frustrated, I wanted to put this behind us so badly, we'd made arrangements for a sleepover that evening and for my sister to attend the conference, for Brian to call into the conference and now we had to wait. We left the SCCA and headed to Children's for the physical therapy evaluation, our last appointment. After showing the therapist all that she had, running, jumping, throwing, resistance tests and climbing, there was no question, she passed with flying colors. Despite the frustration of the postponed conference we still went to my sisters for dinner and a sleepover, Georgia couldn't have been happier - it was a great way to end a stressful week. We had so much fun we stayed almost the entire day Friday too - thanks Auntie and cousins for helping make a stressful week a little easier! Although several important results are still pending I am happy to share that the results thus far look good. A very important one, called chimerism is back, it shows 100% donor cells which is exactly what we want to see. I am focusing on this until I can get the final report in almost two weeks.