Feb 1

In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

     1 Thessalonians 5:18

We are happy to say that my mom is finally coming home today! They thought the antibiotics might have been the cause of her fevers, so once her white blood cells were high enough, they took her off of them and watched her for 24 hours. She still had a slight temperature but nothing compared to the 101-103 degrees she had been running before. The highest it got was 100.4. If it reached 100.5 she wouldn't have been discharged yet. So thank goodness!

We also received more good news today. Because of fevers, they did a CT scan to look for any source of infection. Based on those CT scans, her oncologist said he doesn't feel that they need to do a PET scan (which shows if there is any active cancer cells in the body) because he strongly believes she is in remission! That means no tumors on the lymph nodes-they are all significantly smaller. This is great news!

So the next steps are to have a bone marrow biopsy (to check if the cancer is out of her bone marrow) next week and to meet with the bone marrow specialist to discuss the transplant. The donor has not been medically cleared yet. I guess it takes a while for all of the testing for the donor. We do know that her donor is now a 19 year old girl. I guess something fell through with the 22 year old. Luckily, the 19 year old is the same type of match and has 7/8 of the matching characteristics that they look for.

For the next few weeks, we will be helping my mom to gain some weight and also to build some muscle back. It is really important that she goes into the transplant strong and healthy. Having extra weight will help her to fight infection. Since her chemo has been so harsh, she has lost about 20 lbs and a lot of muscle from not moving around too much. So hopefully the weather will be nice enough that we can go for walks outside. Ideally, she will put on about 10 lbs. She has requested blueberry cobbler with ice cream or banana pudding tonight and Emily's fried eggplant with pasta. The dietitian at the hospital gave us some tips on adding calories to food. We will be adding butter to everything she eats!

These trying times make us all so thankful for each good day. I know this stay has been tough for my mom because she has wanted to be home so badly. I give her so much credit because as hard as it is, she tries to find little things to be thankful for each day. She has a lot of anxiety about the transplant, but she is doing a good job of taking everything day by day and focusing on small goals like coming back home.Please keep praying for a smooth bone marrow transplant and strength, both physical and mental, for her!