Day +214: Little Reminders

Exactly 7 months since her transplant. Mina Brigitta has had a bit of a rough go lately. We've been kind of worried. Not sure about what, exactly, but mostly because she's continued to have some diahrrea and until yesterday really hadn't been eating all that much. Sunday night she didn't eat a single bite for dinner, had a runny poop, and was crying that she wanted to go to the pole house (she says "hospital" now too, but still seems to prefer "pole house"). That's kind of hard to hear, and you immediately want to give some credibility to it because of the seriousness of her situation. But when I stepped back and looked at her, I started feeling like it was too much to ask of her to tell us whether what's ailing her is something serious or not, and that we shouldn't read too much into the words she chose. She might have just been tired and had some nausea from her meds or left over from the flu, and she definitely knows the pole house is where you go when you're sick. And maybe it's comforting to her on some level, which is great. Luckily, Keri called me Monday to tell me she'd eaten a huge lunch, and her stools have been better the last couple of days.

It's been rainy the last couple days, so today Amber took the kids to the Bay Area Discovery Museum, which is apparently a really fun place for kids to explore. It's nice that Mina can do those things now that the rainy season is upon us, though it's better for her to go on school days; Amber said it wasn't very crowded today. They had such a great time and were so pumped up afterwards that they didn't nap all day long! And they still went to bed at close to the normal time, though they were getting pretty ragged toward the end. Sounds like they're both feeling a lot better these last couple of days. Keri said they've been very cute together. Isaac just follows Mina around and wants to do whatever she's doing. She's usually pretty patient, and we've been working on her trying to get her to stop pushing Isaac down when he gets to be too much. Today instead of pushing him, she told him "No, don't do dat! Make Sissy sad!"

Mina Brigitta has another clinic appointment tomorrow, and she told Mina this afternoon she was going to the pole house tomorrow. Mina's response was "Why?" I like that response!

I wanted to also ask people to keep Lily Clair Foster in their thoughts and prayers these next several weeks. She's another little girl with AML who checks in to the hospital for her transplant tomorrow. Her mother Jen has a blog at Caring Bridge: http://www.caringbridge.org/cb/inputSiteName.do?method=search&siteName=lilyclaire
They're having to move temporarily from Kansas City to Minneapolis for the transplant. I guess we didn't know how good we had it.