Thursday's counts

I am going to start this post off with some EXCELLENT news! Clara's MRI was clean! No sign of any disease in her skull or around it! God is good.

Thursday morning I took Clara Jean back to have her counts checked again. Luckily we got a nurse that we have had before and that I really like and trust. She had no trouble with her port and we didn't have to wait too long for the result. Her ANC was up to 850! So I asked the nurse, "she can go to school, right? Since it is over 750." This lead to a discussion about her immune system. Here's the thing, and I think I have shared some of this already, the chemo drug that Clara gets is called Vinblastine. (And she is also on Prednisone.) Vinblastine doesn't usually cause the trouble that it has for Clara. Usually kids "breeze" through Vinblastine treatments. Remember way back when I told you that Dr. Whitlock said that CJ would probably be able to go to school after her treatments and she'd feel pretty good. Remember a the first time her counts were low and I told you that the nurse had told me the week before that she doesn't worry about counts being low with Vinblastine. Well, it hasn't been that way for us. Clara has struggled a tremendous amount.

After talking to the nurse, we decided to wait until CJ's ANC was over 1000 to send her to school. Because it was a surprise that her ANC got all the way down to 220. Because it has taken almost two weeks for it to go from 220 to 850. Because the flu, strep and everything else is going around so much. Because she still has a cough and isn't feeling all that great. We just decided that we'd rather not send her back before she is good and strong.

Monday is chemo #7. They will check her counts again on Monday and I am hopeful. She misses school so much!