In like a Lamb......

It's March 1. I've put out a APB on February because it seemed to disappear from our lives without a notice. The last time I remember being truly cognizant of the date was January 22 - the day I sat in the clinic and listened to Dr. Hem and Haw tell me that Lois had leukemia. She was almost sure. Maybe. Kind of.

Lois returned home from the hospital a shadow of her former self. The last time we "talked" I told you she was weak and pale and lifeless. What I didn't tell you was what that did to me. Remember that anger I've been dealing with? When I took Lois to the clinic last Thursday to have another bone marrow aspiration and biopsy, I wanted to take a machete with me. I was SO MAD at what the doctors had done to my girl. Lois has always been a happy, spunky bucket of fun. The light was gone from her eyes. She was a ghost. And I wanted to take out the mofos who did this to her.

I don't think YaYa knows what a mofo is. Please don't tell her. Thank you.

Yes, I realize the doctors are CURING her. It's the cancer I should be angry at. But the cancer doesn't walk in the room and try to engage me in upbeat conversations about the weather.

Needless to say I left all sharp items back at the ranch and did NOT take my fury out on a single medical professional. But one particular nurse - a kind, meek, sweet person - made the mistake of asking me if Lois was doing well. And instead of venom pouring from my mouth, I dissolved into a pile of tears before her. Somehow that anger instantly morphed into a big pile of grief and heartbreak.

Who am I kidding? It wasn't a metamorphosis. The sadness is ever present. I think the anger is just a clever disguise.

Tears in front of a stranger? That's on my list of "not to-dos". I'm just not prone to emotional outbursts in front of people I don't know. I don't even enjoy doing it in front of people I do know. In fact, let's be frank. Tears are for sissies.

It still grates my last nerve I cried in front of Witchy-Poo. DARN IT!

Anyway. Lois's bone marrow test (BMA) went well. She went to sleep, they stuck two giant needles in her back, she woke up. Her blood results were amazing. For a child who hasn't made a platelet of her own for months, to have 166,000 was awe inducing. No transfusion needed. We picked up the fat man at the Goddard School and came home.


And the next day, something amazing happened. Lois started to perk up. Over the next 4 days, my daughter returned. And she came back better than ever. I think Lois was on a steady decline for several months before her diagnosis and we just didn't notice the slow progression. The Lois that is napping upstairs right now is 10 times perkier, happier, and spunkier than the Lois who lived here in January. Don't get too excited. Chemo can't kill the genetic material in her chromosomes, so she's still a lazy slug like her mother. Genetics is a bitch.

Friday we returned to the clinic to start round #2 of chemo but were stopped dead in our tracks when Lois's neutrophil count wasn't high enough. Essentially, her immune system still hasn't recovered enough to get hit again. So we're home for another week and we try again on Friday.


YaYa and Pops were here for the weekend to see Maggie perform in a school play. (Something tells me this is the first of MANY performances cousin Moo will participate in. She's naturally quite dramatic.) They took the Big Mac home to PA for the week so I can concentrate on mending my head, my heart, and enjoying my temporarily healthy kid. Being with her happy self is the best kind of medicine for what has been ailing me.


The results of the BMA? There are no more abnormal cells in her bone marrow. And those wonky chromosomal abnormalities (4 copies of #21) that were the tell tale sign that something was rotten in Denmark? Gone. She's in remission. But we must proceed as planned to be 100% sure that not one single yicky cell remains.

And that's where I start to get angry again. They took a giant baseball bat and knocked my kid to the ground. And over the course of the past 2 weeks she has picked herself back up and is standing tall once again. And Friday they will wield their bat once more and knock her to the ground again. What mother could participate in this madness and not want to scream herself to sleep every night? It goes against every maternal instinct I have. And I have to do it FIVE MORE TIMES.

Ugh.

But today? Today Lois is happy. And therefore, so am I.

FYI: Lois lost four pounds during her stay in the hospital for pneumonia. That was almost 20% of her body weight. I was told to give her whatever she wanted in order to try to get her to eat. She now subsists on a steady diet of pop tarts, oreos, and chocolate milk.

I am currently accepting donations of will power.

The photos from this post show Lois enjoying her daily mini oreo snack.