Picture for Today

Hello everyone! I just wanted to put a picture up for today. Kelby is doing great. She doesn't have a fever and she is very happy. She has really taken to watching the Disney channel. I think she doesn't have too much energy because her red blood counts are kind of low, so hanging out in the chair with Elmo and watching TV is nice for her. She all of a sudden can say "Elmo" really good. She was yelling it last night when we were at Gramma Wright's house. We took her blood in this morning so we'll see if she has to get a transfusion. Hopefully she will start going up on her own. Blood Count Results: Kelby is on her way back up! The white blood cell count is on its way back up. Her red blood is down, but only a little since Monday. Since her energy and appetite are so good we don't have to take her down to get red blood! The nurse can't believe how much she is eating (she ate a whole fried egg and an Ego for breakfast!) I think they are continually amazed by Kelby. Her platelets are down, but we'll wait until Friday to see if she needs to get more.

Low Counts

We got Kelby's counts back yesterday and now they are pretty low. If she gets a fever now we'll have to go to the hospital. Hopefully those counts will go up fast. They went down a lot slower this time. Before they said that it may take longer for the counts to come up with this chemo too. So hopefully she doesn't get those sicknesses that we had this weekend. She bumped her head on a chair last night and it swelled up pretty quick, but she doesn't seem to mind too much. We feel pretty bad though. It is one of those normal kid bumps I guess, but we don't think that she deserves any "normal" bumps when she has all the rest of this too. She just takes it as it comes though. I'll try to get some cute pictures of her today...after we all get dressed and ready for the day.

Kelby is the Healthiest Here

We had a very yucky weekend, but the funny part is that Kelby was completely happy and it was Michael and I that were sick! We would much rather have it that way though. The struggle was just trying to keep Kelby away from our germs. I had a cold and a stomach thing and Mike just got the stomach thing...so we are praying that we were successful in keeping Kelby germ free. She seems to be feeling great. She is eating good again. We will be taking her blood in for counts later today. Hopefully they are still high and she doesn't need a red blood transfusion. We are planning to go back down to the hospital for the next round of chemo on February 6. We are so excited that we haven't had to go down this time for a fever. Thanks again for all the prayers! We know that that is the difference. We so appreciate everyone's love and support! God Bless!

Still At Home

We are so excited to still be at home! For the last 2 chemos Kelby was down at the hospital by the Wednesday or Thursday of the next week...and here it is Saturday and we are still here. Yesterday Mike had to take her down to get a platelet transfusion because her platelet counts went down. That only takes a few hours. She may have to go down later for a red blood transfusion, but hopefully her counts will start going up. Her ANC is still high enough to not worry. So, we are all doing great. We were having a hard time trying to get Kelby to eat, but right now she is working on her second Ego waffle! She must be starting to feel better. I, on the other hand, have caught a cold. So, I am walking around with a mask on and I can't hold or kiss Kelby, so I am a little sad! I'll be okay though. Love you all, Shawna

A Pretty Good Day

Kelby has finally gotten past the sickness from the last round of chemotherapy it seems. She hasn't thrown up now for a couple of days. She hasn't been taking much in though either. The only thing she would really take halfway decent is her trusty old milk. We finally started giving her things with a syringe and then she'll suck them down. Shawna has gotten pretty good at giving her yogurt and juice. She won't take it on a spoon, but if you squirt it into her mouth she sometimes realizes it tastes pretty good afterall. She's pretty picky though. One day she'll like something, the next day she won't. She's done pretty good today though, she ate a bunch of ham (of all things) for breakfast this morning, but she wouldn't touch banana, oatmeal, or oranges, all of which she normally likes. She's even given up cheese lately which have always been her favorite. She's got a lot of energy today for the first time in a while. The sun is out so she even got outside a played a while. It may be short lived though because her blood counts are doing pretty good now, but we expect they'll drop rapidly over the next few days. She seems to have quite a bit less energy when her blood counts bottom out. It's about that time. She seems to be in pretty good shape though, so maybe we'll get lucky and avoid the hospital until her next scheduled round this time.

Hanging Out at Home

Kelby is pretty mellow today. She has gotten sick a few more times since we have gotten home. Her warning signs are pretty good, so we usually catch it. Hopefully she will be feeling better soon. We are struggling to get her to eat food and drink a lot. It is most important for us to get fluids into her. She really LOVES Ego waffles though. She can even say "waffle". This is one amazing girl. I just wanted to remind everyone to check the new "Multimedia" section of the website. Mike put a really really cute video up for you to check out. Love you all!

All Done With Round 3

Well, we are finally at home again. It is so nice to be here. I did four nights in a row down there and it really wore me out. Kelby on the other hand was quite content and happy to be there. We had to stay a night longer than I thought we would have to. The reason is because after the last dose of the cisplatin, they like to wash out the kidneys with lots of fluids. I was kind of a grump about staying down there longer. I know that it is for Kelby's best though. The doctors aren't trying to be hard on us...they just want to do what is safest for Kelby. Now we just need to get her to drink a lot of fluids and eat some food. We just pray that she doesn't get a fever this time so we can avoid a long stay down at the hospital next week. She will probably have to go down for some transfusions either way, but that is only a few hours. Kelby is doing great. She really is happy no matter where she is. The hospital probably feels just as much like home now that she is used to it. She really likes flirting with the nurses and patients down there! I guess that I need to take a lesson from Kelby about having a positive attitude no matter what. Her nickname should be "Happy"! Love to you all! Shawna

No Throwing Up!!

Kelby made it through the whole night last night without getting sick!! We thought for sure that she would be worse last night than she was the night before since the bad stuff builds up in the system. So, my mom and I were wonderfully surprised when we put her to bed at 8:00 pm and she didn't wake up again until 5:00 am when they took some blood and I changed her diaper. Then she went back to sleep until 7:45! What an amazing girl! She just has one dose of chemo left for today and then we can head home. She is off for a walk around the hospital with Gramma now. It is amazing how much she is growing and changing through all of this. She is learning new words every day. She is really into "oppsies" and "okay". She keeps saying "yellow" too. Every other word that I say, she copies. There are so many new words that she says, but hasn't quite yet perfected...but that will come with time. A lot of the wonderful nurses and doctors around this hospital are enchanted with Kelby. I don't know how anyone could see her and not fall in love with her anyway. I let them all in on this website, so I have to add a disclaimer...that I don't necessarily know that every "medical" thing that we talk about is exact, so I hope the doctors and nurses don't laugh at us. We just retain as much of the "medical" stuff as we can and hopefully it is accurate.

Doing Great!

Kelby is doing really well. We were worried for nothing...at least so far. She hasn't gotten sick at all. She slept through the night! The bad thing was that her diaper got so full that it leaked...they are pumping lots of fluids into her. So tonight I'll have to wake her up to change her diaper. She is just getting fluids for now and they will give her her next dose of chemo at about 3:00 pm today. They said that she may start feeling sicker with each dose, so we'll just have to see how it goes. They did an ultrasound on her tummy today. It didn't sound like they could say much about the tumor from the results. I'll have to ask the Oncologist when he comes back in later today. I finally got her to take a nap, so she is currently resting peacefully. Mike is bringing me the digital camera later, so I'll take some pictures. My mom is coming in tomorrow morning, so she and I are going to make a slumber party out of the rest of our stay here at the hospital. We should be able to go home on Friday afternoon if she keeps doing so well. The doctor said that he doesn't expect the recovery time for the surgery and stem cell transplant to be as long as I had thought before. He thinks that recovery from the surgery would be about a week. We don't know when they will do the stem cell transplant until the time gets closer, but the doctor said that the recovery from that has been as fast as two weeks when there weren't any complications. I have been counting on 6-8 weeks for the recovery on the transplant, so 2-4 weeks sounds encouraging. All in all, things are going wonderfully. Thanks for keeping us in your prayers!

Round 3 Chemotherapy

We are all settled in again. Kelby got a hearing test this morning. One of the drugs that she'll be getting this time is bad for her hearing, so they do a baseline test on her before they give her any. Now they are just giving her two hours of fluids before they start anything. So, she is still her happy self. We'll see how she does during the chemo. I hope it isn't as bad as they say it will be. She has been stronger than the chemo the other times...so here's hoping (and praying)! Bye for now.

Hat Gallery

Everyone has been so wonderful and many people have sent Kelby hats! I wanted you all to see how cute she is in them! She really likes them and leaves them on most of the time. We are all doing great. It is pretty boring around here...except that happy baby running around. Kelby is eating like a Piggy! We love that. Hopefully she won't have to go on IV Nutrition after the next chemo. Not much else is going on, but I wanted to say "hi" so people keep checking back.

Cute Pictures

I just had to put up a couple cute pictures from yesterday and today. Everything is still going good. We are a little worried about the next round of chemo starting on the 16th. The nurse called yesterday and said that the difference may be in the recovery time of her white blood cell count. So, if we go down to the hospital after that round with a fever, we may be there for a quite a long time. We'll manage though...now that we have our computer!

Happy As A Clam

Kelby is really doing great. She is getting caught up on her sleep and eating. It is nice for her to be her happy self again. We really love this time! I have been rather spacey myself. I forgot to go to my OB appointment yesterday. Mike found us a reasonably priced laptop on-line and we just got it yesterday. It will be soooo wonderful to have. Mike can do some work from the hospital that way, plus we can keep up on our email and this website better. From now on, probably only one of us will be down at the hospital at a time. That means we are stuck in the room, so the computer will be VERY handy. Plus, it can be boring in there. (The doctor says boring is good...because that means there really isn't too much to stress over.) We even have a Winnie the Pooh game for Kelby to play on the computer too! We also want to say thank you to everyone for the help that has made it possible for us to purchase this computer! Kelby is going to be a real computer wiz when she grows up! We are all doing very well. We really appreciate all the entries in the guestbook! It is so fun to see who is checking in on Kelby. We love you all. God bless.

Home Again

We made it home again! It is so nice to be home! Kelby is doing great. We need to try to get her eating more now. Our next scheduled trip to the hospital is on January 16th. Kelby will be getting more Chemo of a different kind that is expected to be harder on her. Of course, she handled the first two rounds very well, so keep praying and I am sure she'll do great through this one. I think that during that round of Chemo we will probably be getting a CT and bone scan done on Kelby to see her progress. But, for now, it is nice to be home. I think that Kelby is feeling better. The tumor in her jaw is nearly gone now. I'll get more pictures up soon. PS. I just figured out there is a mouse in our garage that had been snacking on our hospital snack stash. Ewww! Yucky! I got all the food out of the garage now. I guess these are some of the things you have to deal with when you own your own house. Love to all our friends and family, Shawna

ANC Turns Upward

It looks like Kelby may get released from the hospital tomorrow. If you look at her blood counts for the past couple of days, you can see that her ANC has turned upward now. We're hoping and expecting it to meet the 200 requirement tomorrow morning when they draw her blood. Shawna stayed down last night, and let me come home to sleep. I was going to do the same for her tonight, but Kelby finally slept well so Shawna slept every bit as good as I did if not better so she's feeling pretty good. We'll see what she wants to do when I get back down there though. Kelby should be feeling much better today because she got blood and platelets yesterday which are an instant energy boost.

Fun at the Hospital

We're on day #3 in the hospital now. If you look at todays blood count information you see that pretty much all of her counts are low. The fever went away yesterday, and as a matter of fact we discovered that she is starting to get two new teeth (on the opposite side from the tumor). This most likely explains the fever, crankiness, runny nose, and lack of eating. We probably could have stayed home. With her counts this low she will need transfusions, so we would have only bought a couple of days anyway. Today she will get a platelet transfusion and a full unit of blood. After that we'll just be waiting for her ANC to get back up over 200. As you could see from the counts before I lost them, her WBC is still gradually decreasing and has just about bottomed out, so they will probably start to head back in the positive direction over the weekend (if we're lucky). Until that happens Kelby is stuck here. All in all she's doing farily well though. She's not eating much. She had M&M's and a little milk for dinner last night. They said any calories are good and that was the only thing she'd eat so ... She was pretty run down yesterday, but then got quite a burst of playfulness last night. She keeps waking up several times during the night though, pretty frantic sometimes, so Shawna and I aren't getting much sleep. I think for our own sanity we're going to instate a new rule where one of us sleeps back at home every night. The driving won't be so great, but it'll be better for us if we're not both exhausted all the time. Speaking of which, staring at this montior is making my eyes hurt so I'm going to stop now.

Back To Redmond

Well, we thought if we could keep Kelby more isolated when her blood counts were low that we could maybe avoid the Hospital. It turns out that we may have been right, but we ended up being wrong because we're back at the hospital. About a week after the chemo Kelby's white blood count goes down to about nothing which puts her at high risk for contracting bugs. At a temperature of 101 they automatically admit her. This happened last time between rounds too, and once we were admitted, they wouldn't release kelby until her ANC went back over 200 even though her bloodwork came up clean. She has been a little warm the past couple of days, just like she was last time, and then finally got up around 101 this evening. We struggled with making the call, because we're pretty sure that once we're here again, they're not going to release her until her ANC gets back up over 200. However, we don't really want to take any chances so Shawna called and told the doctor that Kelby was running a little bit of a fever and he said to bring her down as soon as possible, so here we are. We got down here at about 8:30pm. Yippee. The part that is making us pull our hair out is that once we got here and they took Kelby's temp, she's only running about 99 degrees, so we could have stayed home, but now she'll probably be stuck here for at least a few days. We'll just have to wait and see though. Que sera sera. Her platelets are getting kinda low so chances are she'll need a platelet transfusion soon anyway. By the way, thanks for all of your feedback on the website. I'm glad so many people are reading it. I know that it lets our situation seem a little more personal to you, which was the idea. I figure that the more personal it seems the more likely you all are to keep praying and not forget about us :) Let me know if there are other things you would like to see added or changed because this is for you and I'm open to suggestions. I'm already planning on changing the menu system.