Day +265: Still dealing with the ear infection

Mina Brigitta went back to the ear, nose & throat doctor today, and he still saw some gunk in her ear after nearly a week of antibiotic eardrops. She's still not acting sick; quite the opposite in fact, she's more energetic than ever. But he's worried enough that he put her back on amoxicillin just in case. We're not too thrilled about that; she gets a c. diff. infection pretty much every time she goes on antibiotics, and her stools have finally been returning to normal. He did cancel the CT for tomorrow, which is kind of a relief because it would have required sedation. But he threatened that if she's not improved next week, they may want to go in through her ear and get a biopsy.

Meanwhile, Keri and I both have scratchy throats and runny noses, so it would be good to get the old stuff cleared away before the next wave hits. Whatever I have appears to be pretty mild, so hopefully it won't cause any major problems.

We're still waiting on the results of the engraftment study, which they drew last week. We need to continue to see that her blood cells are 100% donor, which they've been the three or four previous times they did the study. If her own cells start to come back, they would begin to worry about relapse, and we really don't want to go there.

Saturday is the one-year anniversary of Mina's relapse diagnosis. Mina became ill with flu-like symptoms, so Keri took her in on Thursday the 6th for a routine blood test. Her counts came back abnormally low, so they called us to come in to Seven Long. I will never forget hearing the platelet number and knowing it was way, way too low. The next morning Dr. Loh came by and was reassuring, so that we almost believed it wasn't really happening. She came by again an hour or two later with tears in her eyes, having just looked at the slide of Mina's blood. It's been a long, long road since then, and we still have a long way to go. But this January is passing pretty uneventfully so far, so we have that to be thankful for.

Amber was here tonight -- she hadn't seen the kids in a month due to holiday travels and her work schedule. Her comment was that they're both much bigger than a month ago. She also noted that Mina is no longer a toddler. She's turned the corner and become a little girl. This morning she was playing "car" with Megan, and the game continued after Keri and I got home tonight. She puts the couch cushion on the floor, with the throw pillows set up to make a car seat for Waah Baby. She sits in the front and drives, Waah Baby sits in the middle in her "car seat", and the other person sits in back. She buckles you in carefully in two steps just like a car seat (between the legs and across the chest). Then she drives to the playground where you play for awhile. And then you get back in the car and drive home. It's really fun to watch as her role-playing games become more and more elaborate.