Speeding towards home!

I will catch you all up on the latest...

Sarah's white blood cell count was in the 6000's  today, and she is considered engrafted--which means her bone marrow blood making factory is up and running!  What this means is, we are in high gear getting our house ready for Sarah to come home.  If you missed my original bone marrow transplant post, one of the biggest deals about this whole thing is that our house has to be completely spotless as much as we can get it before she comes home.  The goal is to rid the house of germs and dust as much as we can.  Even though she has plenty of white blood cells, they may be too immature to fight off some infections, so she will still have many restrictions until the end of January.

So, the duct cleaners came today, some precious friends have a duct cleaning business, and they came and did it for us on the spot!  The carpets will all be cleaned tomorrow, and I have some wonderful ladies with servants' hearts coming tomorrow to help me CLEAN!  Oh my, we were so stressed, but now we are feeling more in control. 

The other big news is, Sarah got to leave this room today!  She wore a mask, and we went on a little field trip with Rhys (remember when I told you about him?) down to see the lady who makes the ID badges that all the docs and nurses wear.  Sarah loves those things and always snags them from the nurses who come in, so she got to get her picture taken, and get her very own.  It says, Dr. Sarah, Main Big Wig of the BMT. (Bone Marrow Transplant) : )   Then we took another walk around the halls later to show off her new badge to everyone.

She is doing fantastic!  She is eating and drinking and apart from a little runny nose and a bit of left over tummy issues, feeling fine.  Our BMT nurse this morning again told me how completely awesome she is doing compared to all the other kids.  She calls Sarah her little superstar!  But we all know who the REAL SUPERSTAR is!!  And Sarah just got to be on the receiving end of His Super Powers. : )  That same nurse said Sarah is being discharged faster than ANY BMT patient she has seen.  Only 3 weeks and we are done!

Today marks 3 weeks, and tomorrow we leave this hospital room!  We actually could have gone home on Thursday, but since the carpets are just getting cleaned tomorrow, they want them to air out for a couple of days before she comes, so we are going to stay in the hospital "hotel" until Friday.  I think that is going to be kind of fun.  The boys were so cute today, so excited for her to come home soon!

So, once more let me tell you what God did......

He allowed Sarah to get this treatment (even if it has awful side effects) that she needed.

He let her have fun and no symptoms in the hospital for 6 days before things started to get bad.

She only had 5 bad days.

We prayed for no mouth sores.  She got only one when the other kids normally have lots of them.  One nurse I talked to said in all her years of seeing BMT kids, she only saw ONE that did not get mouth sores.  When I heard her say that, I knew it was possible...and it WAS with GOD!  That other kid probably had lots of people praying for him too.  I'm really not sure why God did let her get one.  But even that one wasn't very bad. 

There were no complications during the time her counts were low.  No infections, no trouble with her other organs, or any of the other scary things that could have happened.

When her counts started coming back up, she was back to herself in about a day, already eating pizza.: )

She is seemingly unaffected by the whole ordeal.  She is such a precious treasure.  I am totally not kidding.

And the hidden gem in all of this to me personally is that I was able to have all of this time with Sarah all to myself.  In my busy life with several kids, there just is not a whole lot of time to focus on just one of them for hours and hours.  And I was thinking tonight as I played, read, sang, watched videos, and cuddled with Sarah, how truly thankful I am for this part of it.  I am just so thankful to my Lord and Savior and best Friend-- for everything I mentioned up there, and for giving me the beautiful gift of being Sarah's mother.  He has shown Himself faithful every step along the way, in so many ways.  Most of them too personal to even try to explain.  If you know Him, then you probably know what I'm talking about.  And if you don't know Him, then I hope you will soon. 

Thank you each of you who has prayed for us.  And please don't stop if the Lord brings us to mind.  We still won't know for a little while if the chemo accomplished what it was supposed to do, and we can all pray for good results, as well as smooth sailing as we transition our girl home with a still immature immune system.

Good night from the hospital for probably the last time...hopefully forever!!  Have a wonderful day tomorrow!

      With big sis, Cassandra on her first day not attached to machines!

Getting ready to get her picture taken for her dr. badge with Rhys.  First she needed to check out his cool watch. : )