October 5th, 2010

Today was yet another slow Charlotte news day.  Her neutrophil numbers are still rock bottom so we are planning on spending a while yet at the hospital.  Dr Diamond was not in the office today so I will have to ask her tomorrow to see what her thoughts are on the rest of the week for Charlotte.  I hope she still thinks this is normal and nothing to worry about.

Amy met with the Nurse Practitioner today to discuss things we may need to know for our eventual trip home.  They also went over Charlotte’s treatment plan and what to expect in the coming months.  It sounds like a stem cell or bone marrow transplant will be very much considered and so far, everything we know about that sounds dangerous and scary to us.  One more hurdle to clear I guess in the long road ahead for Charlotte and us.

G&G Elske came today and that perked Charlotte up a little bit.  We are still seeing her become less excited about the options she has available to her here.  She can only make so many hallway walks.  She can only spend so much time in the play rooms.  And both Mommy and I feel the same.  It would be a little easier to take if we were like almost everyone else we see here.  Some children are here for only a day or two.  We have been here so long that we have already seen one young girl come and go three different times.  The treatment plan for everyone else is only a couple of days in here and the rest at home.  The more we think about that, the more jealous we are of their situation.  We are grateful that Charlotte still has the energy she has at this point in her treatment, but there is just no outlet here for her to express it all.  We miss our dog.  We miss our yard.  We miss seeing her chase after Broadway…life is beginning to get very much the same here and it is not going to get any better I am sure.   Our patience is really getting thin with staff too.  Suddenly we’ve been assigned several new nurses and we are tired of “training” every new person that enters Charlotte’s room.  Naps and night time sleeping have been affected as well and this makes for even grumpier attitudes.  And unfortunately we haven’t been impressed with these new staff and are keeping our fingers crossed that we have familiar faces tomorrow.  We also found out that after Charlotte undergoes the bone marrow biopsy on the 14th, it will take up to 5 days to get the results!  We don’t even want to think about the anxiety we will be undergoing during those 5 days.

On a brighter side, the date and time for Charlotte’s musical benefit has been selected and we are very excited.  Everyone mark your calendars for Thursday, November 4th at 7pm at the High Noon Saloon in Madison. Watch for more details to follow.