Our Clinic Visit on Monday was all good news. The doctors are VERY happy with her progress and how she has been responding to the medications. Although they did not change any of the dosages this month, they decided her weekly blood draws are not necessary at this point so less pokes for Keira, yay! We will still go one time per month about two weeks after her treatment to see how her immune system is responding to the medications. In addition, we are reducing her PT and OT sessions to just once a month.
It seems that our active little girl is meeting (and sometime exceeding) all the benchmarks for a 20-month old.
While we are overjoyed with this good news, we are still a little nervous about how she will respond if/when we continue to take away the medications but we are doing our best to stay present and trust that our doctors know best. :)
Keira's follow up MRI is scheduled for January 3, 2011. This is just part of the cancer follow-up to make sure that everything is as we expect. That will be a long morning since Keira cannot eat anything after midnight and her scan isn't until 1pm :( We are already working on getting the April MRI scheduled for first thing in the morning! These MRIs will be part of Keira's life so we are going to do our best to make it as easy on her as possible.
The day of treatment was long but Keira handled it well. We were not lucky enough to get a private room this time but had nice roommates. The IV was in with only 2 pokes (thank goodness!) Jamie came to LPCH for the day to help since Naveen had some meetings that he had to attend. It is important to have an extra set of hands now that she is mobile and does not like to sit still. We did our best to keep her entertained and in a good mood. Some friends brought us a yummy lunch and we got a surprise visit from a volunteer that is part of Stanford's Pet Therapy Program. There's nothing like a big cuddly dog to help pass the time.
Here are a couple of photos from our day -
Keira and Bear got matching hats
Aunt Jamie took the day off to help out at the hospital
Pet Therapy was a wonderful distraction for all of us!
Bonus Video - A Walk With Garbo