Update

We didn't quite make it to today's appointment but, again, we chose to look at the good things this made possible.  First, the back story.  Upon picking Annie up from the last day of school before vacation she tripped over a tree root and landed on various body parts, including her face.  What a way to start what we were hoping was a few weeks of R and R.  While we didn't have to take her to the hospital, we did get the pleasure of seeing her with half a face of black and blues for the holidays.  Additionally this meant her blood counts would drop faster as her body lost blood to the bruising.  In spite of this inauspicious start things stayed pretty calm until last Sunday afternoon.  It gets pretty dry this time of year and this ups the odds of Annie getting a bloody nose.  Lately we've had the bad luck of her veins cracking so high up in her nose that pinching doesn't work.  She got one of these Sunday and things escalated to the point where we had to take her to the ER.  Luckily her new hospital was not crowded and she was in and out with both a platelet and hemoglobin transfusion in record-breaking time.  This also meant we were able to put off today's appointment until 1/13.  It all feels like we're on borrowed time as the original plan was to begin the transplant process yesterday.  I'm really glad we were able to put it off a bit longer as this would have been our most depressing Christmas ever knowing what was awaiting us the day after New Year's.  Next update hopefully after the 1/13 appointment.