Interim Maintenance- Day 27

Thanksgiving Weekend

We were slightly apprehensive to join the family for the weekend. We have no idea what Taleah's counts are and have to assume that they are pretty low. We won't know until Sunday afternoon. We found out the day before that one of the baby cousins had croup. We knew our answer, we would not be joining them. However, we did decide to join them for dinner BUT we sat by ourselves outside while everyone else ate inside.(Grandpa Stevenson did join us for a bit)We wanted it that way because we wanted to be in the open air away from anyone that could have been exposed to the sick baby. It broke my heart when Taleah asked to sit at the kid table with the other kids... and it broke my heart when they wanted to come by her and we had to guard her and tell them to stay away... it broke my heart when one of her cousins felt bad when we told her to nicely "go away". We cloroxed a toy for her to use to play with the girls, but only lasted a short amount of time because they were getting too close. It was SO nice to still feel a part of the "festivities" for a minute, but was hard at the same time. Almost as if we made the kids feel like they were getting in trouble for wanting to be by Taleah... and made Taleah feel like she was in trouble and couldn't play with everyone. Try explaining that to an almost 3 yr old. She did great and wore a mask when we asked. Everyone else was so nice to accomodate us.

Since we only ended up staying for about 30 minutes, we headed home and finished Thanksgiving dinner on a blanket in our front yard. Thank goodness for warm weather!!!

Some of "daddy's boys" came to our house for the first haircut. They were growing it for Locks of Love, but had to cut it for basketball. They wanted Taleah to be the one to cut it in honor of her haircut soon to come.

One nice thing about having to stay home all weekend was getting all of the Christmas decor out. We had a blast playing in the yard(w/ Chloe and Ash) while the boys (meaning Anthony came to the rescue) and helped Scott put the lights up. Next....the tree!

They are the cutest little buddies. I love it. They just laughed and laughed. It made my day after a weekend of feeling "left out" (not because anyone made us feel that way.. just having to keep our distance for Taleah).

We were able to go for 2 hours to spend time with Scott's siblings/cousins for some fun games and treats. It was great to feel normal for a minute and spend time with family. They were all so sweet AGAIN to keep their distance and wipe everything down before we came (Grandpa Stevenson and Lydia).

The kids stayed at my parents and played. It lasted until about 10:30pm... Slade was delirious and laughed the whole way home. Taleah convinced me that she was having a sleepover because she didn't get to have one at the Stevensons with her cousins. So.... I let her stay.

She was busy while I was gone. She decorated gingerbread houses at Grammy's (she missed those at the Stevenson's that day but was able to do her own the next day at the Stevenson's outside so she was able to have one like the cousins and even had brand new candy for it so that no one else had touched it yet). She also dressed up with Tabes and practiced modeling poses.

Seriously funny...

Apparently Tabes was helping her with her "vogue" face. Nice.

Thankfully, we have just had the headaches this time. There hasn't been any throwing up and maybe it was because we stayed on top of the medicine for a few days after. I can tell that most days she is not 100%. I can see it in her eyes when she starts feeling sick. There hasn't been anything too unusual. She has rolled her ankle a few times, but I can't tell if she is just a clumsy 3 year old or an effect from the vincristine.

We will have her port accessed in the morning and have her labs checked. We will then know if her ANC is high enough to go up to PCMC. Our next visit will be there with a lumbar puncture. Then the last chemo/visit will be in STG (if all keeps going well). The time off (2 1/2 weeks) from driving up there has been great. So great. The next phase will consist of more driving up there... yay... my favorite drive.

I am trying to be positive about the upcoming holidays. It's hard some days. Mostly, I feel bad when she realizes about the things she is missing out on. I think she really misses going out and about. Now that there will be so much going on... I will have to do my best to keep it quiet. She is such a sweetheart and is handling things so well. She doesn't really know any different. She thinks this a normal life. It's not. Well, it is for us now. I am accepting it. I just need to be positive and remember that there are MANY more years of holidays to come. Anything to save her life!!