Hi all – Good news and bad news. The bad news is that Sally had a rough day. She woke up and was whimpering and crying for quite some time, even when being held and walked around. That’s very unusual for her, when Nicole or I hold her she’ll typically calm down right away. This usually means that she’s in a lot of pain. The nurses ended up giving her a larger dose of morphine which settled her. Throughout the day she was very tired and would cry the second I got up without her or put her down. She spent most of the day snuggled up against me on the chair, dosing on and off.

This is all likely the result of bone pain, which is actually good news. Since being admitted on Monday, Sally has been receiving a daily shot to help encourage her marrow to produce blood cells. Her results this morning showed her counts are finally increasing, which means the shots are working and is what is likely causing pain in her bones. The staff knows this from older kids undergoing similar treatment who can explain what the pain is like.

For Sally to be released, we need two things to happen:

1) Her counts have to continue to increase, we need her neutrophils to go from 0 to .5. Could be tomorrow, could be the next day, or the next we don’t know.

2) We have to get her off the IV morphine. This is a challenge as for some reason, Sally gets an allergic reaction to the morphine we can give through her feeding tube. She also gets a reaction to the alternative, so need to explore other options starting tomorrow to manage her pain.

The other route is we wait til she doesn’t need any painkillers before bringing her home, but that could mean a couple more days in the hospital.

Nicole is there this evening, I am back home in Brooklyn with the boys. Friends AnnMarie and Andrea took them bowling for the first time today, which they loved.

So we’ll see what tomorrow brings, we’re hoping her counts continue to improve and we can resolve her pain issues. Please keep Sally in your thoughts and prayers.

Matt