Briley is back home

I left out of Seymour around 5 this morning to make it to Ft. Worth in time for Briley's appointment at clinic. I arrived without any issues and met Alicia and Briley in the clinic waiting room. Alicia had numbing cream on both of Briley's arms and port. That's good, be prepared! Briley went back for vitals and blood draw out of one of the arms. I know it hurts by the way she cries, but I think most of it comes from anxiety than of the actual stick. The numbing cream works wonders.

The lab results came back. Her ANC was 650. So it is too low to start the next round of chemo (750). However, it is high enough for her to be able to come home! At first we were really disappointed that she could not begin the next round. We are ready to get through this phase. The doctor made us feel much better about it though. She explained that most kids are delayed 2 weeks, as Briley is. Also, since the next round will knock her counts down, it will actually be good that she will be able to build her counts up over 1000 before the round begins. That should help keep her from being knocked down so far and possibly keep her out of the hospital. We'll take that.

We left out of clinic, packed our stuff, ate lunch, and checked out of the RMH. Briley is trilled to be back home again. She is feeling very good right now. She's laughing and playing and running around. It's good to see her like that. Bryson is also happy that all of us are home again. He started crying in his sleep and we think it's the stress of not being home with us. All of this has been hard on him not understanding the situation. All we can do is try our best with both kids.

Briley's next appointment is next Thursday. Her counts will be above 750 by then, so the next round of the necessary evil will start. It will take her counts a couple of weeks to drop after beginning treatment. Until then, she will be free to come home on the days she's not getting chemo. We are hoping that she will be at the RMH only a couple of weeks during low counts.

We were thinking for the past week that she would have to stay at the RMH for a month straight. Oh how things change quickly. I gave up trying to schedule anything during July. Do what you gotta do, right? Home is wonderful!