It’s been a week! I’m going to start off with the happy things. Elizabeth finished her 8 week lovenox protocol, which means no more shots twice a day that leave bruises all over her arms and legs. HORRAY! She’s been working on her nutrition with a nurse practitioner that her vaulting coach referred us to and it’s really helping. She’s keeping weight on, stronger, and her blood counts have even improved. She was able to go watch her friend play basketball at the jr. high. She’s enjoyed fun family game time with uncles & aunts and visits from friends in the neighborhood. Her home physical therapy visits are twice a week now and her first visit this week was great! She worked on sit/stands and walking on stairs with crutches. It’s wonderful to see her get stronger and she is able to use her walker more consistently now, but it still wares her out and she generally prefers the ease of the wheelchair. She spends time painting most days and it’s a win-win because I end up with awesome canvas or watercolor art to decorate the house. (Her latest snowman watercolor painting was darling.) On the flip side, we’ve dealt with some major frustrations in poor communication with the doctors…both between the doctors and the doctors and us. I’ve been trying for weeks to get to right person to contact for setting up physical therapy home visits while we’re in WA, but instead found out that the Dr’s here and the radiation center had different starts dates for her treatment in Seattle, as well as a different chemo plan during treatment. It’s all so much more complicated than I care to go on explaining, but I ended up reaching out to our social worker and it was a huge blessing because he stepped right in an sorted it all out for me over a few days. We’ll now be starting radiation Dec 28th and spending an extra 5 day week in the hospital getting chemo while in Seattle. This is very sad for me because I was looking forward to getting 2 weeks of radiation done while our family was all together. I’m still working on sorting out what I’m going to do with the rest of my family plans with this shift. It will work out. I’m thankful for all the friends and family that have offered to help.
