Tea In The New Basement

The basement is really looking nice. Kerstin and McKinsey posed in their new play area.
Kerstin had a much better day today. She took all of her meds like a champ and had pleanty of energy to play all day long. She even got to spend a few hours with one of her special friends, Jenny, while Jeff and Annie went to donate blood. Even though her counts are dropping as expected, we are hoping that she has turned the corner from her last cycle of chemo and it's nothing but up hill from here. Please keep her in your prayers as we continue to witness God's grace and power on our family. 

Rough Night

Kerstin woke up during the night with a neck ache and a headache. Jeff and Annie took turns laying with her, trying to get her settled down and back to sleep. She finally nodded off about 7am and we let her sleep until 10:30. We went to St. E's this afternoon for labs. Looks like her ANC dropped to 2000. Her appetite is also pretty poor and the ATRA has dehydrated her again, so we are pushing plenty of fluids and lip balm. We also had to do a dressing change today which is one of Kerstin's most dis-liked things. All around kind of a rough day.

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."

            -- Mark Twain

Chemo takes effect

Kerstin got to go to St. E's on Monday for labs. Her counts are still high. Her ANC was over 2500! We expect that to be dropping soon as the chemotherapy gets to work. She has been feeling really tired the last few days. Today she did a lot of sleeping and not much playing. She has been nauseous and not very hungry and threw up once today. We have noticed that strong food smells make her queasy. McKinsey goes back to school tomorrow. We will miss her at home, but it will be good to get back into the routine again. I know she is looking forward to seeing all her friends. Thanks for stopping by to check on us. Leave us a message if you can! Have a blessed day!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone! Annie and the girls rang in the new year at the neighbors (sorry, no pictures), and Jeff was at work. We all went to church this morning and then ate lunch with some friends from church. Kerstin started to feel ill during lunch, so Annie took her home before she got sick in the restaurant. McKinsey and Jeff got a ride home from the Scheele's. Kerstin was feeling better by late afternoon and decided she needed to go shopping with some money she found in one of her other purses. She has had her eye on a Barbie laptop computer at Radio Shack. The computer was on sale, but Kerstin didn't have quite enough for it. It was the last one in the store and it's hard to say no for an educational toy, so Jeff spotted her the rest.

This is probably the last public socializing for Kerstin for a while because her counts should be dropping from her last cycle of chemo last week. She will go in tomorrow to get her counts checked and we'll go from there.

We hope everyone had a safe new year's eve, and you all will have a blessed new year!