Busy Weekend

Mollie has had a great week and even told me "Thank you" for bringing her to swimming lessons. She's really enjoying them!

We have a busy weekend ahead of us so I'll be taking a blog vacation until Monday. Enjoy the weekend!

Donate if you can!

Blood: the gift of life.There is a little girl fighting for her life in Australia. Anika has the same form of leukemia as Mollie; she went through treatment and had three years off treatment, and then she relapsed. She is now on a relapse protocol with very, very strong chemo and she needs to get in remission before she can get a bone marrow transplant.

Her situation is dire and her family is doing their best to hold up. I logged on to her site yesterday and saw that her platelets were 12 (a normal count is anywhere between 150-400) and she couldn't get a transfusion because there were no O+ CMVneg platelets available!! Her care team had to wait and watch for signs of brain hemorrhage/stroke. She finally got a transfusion today. The blood donations are not going to cure her cancer, but they are going to give her time, hopefully, for the chemo to work.

I wanted to take this opportunity to again ask anyone who can, to please donate blood. As often as you can. Platelets, needed for normal blood clotting, typically have a shelf life of only 5-7 days. Neonatal and pediatric patients often need volume-reduced platelets that have a shelf-life of less than one day. Immunocompromised adult and pediatric patients also need CMV-negative blood. CMV is a common virus, harmless to most people, but can cause severe infections for patients with weak immune systems.

June 14th just happens to be World Blood Donor Day. Click here to find out where you can give.

Swimming!

Mollie had her first swimming lesson today! We were planning to do it last summer, but she was diagnosed in June, so that plan (along with many others) was axed. It was a tough decision to do it this summer though, because depending on which doctor you ask, a) Mollie can swim in any pool as long as her counts are good, b) Mollie can only swim in private pools, c) Mollie should not swim in any pool except a baby pool in the backyard.

The pool we go to seems well-maintained, and they check the pH and chlorine frequently so we decided to go for it. As soon as I asked Mollie to put her swimsuit on today, she started acting like she didn't want to go. Then, she had a complete melt-down when we got there; not because she's scared of the water, but because she was too shy to talk to the teacher and participate. I had to nearly force her into the pool, but once in, the tears disappeared and were replaced by smiles and giggles. Lucy hung out with me, deck-side, perfectly content (relieved?) not to be in the water.


Mollie can't wait to go back tomorrow!