Another Tour of Duty

Annie's donor has graciously agreed to our May transplant date so now the countdown officially begins.   Annie will be admitted Sunday, May 5th with the first of the what I'm calling the "twin towers of doom" to begin on Monday, May 6th. This first "tower" involves the process of killing off her bone marrow with chemotherapy and radiation in preparation for replacing it with the donor's marrow.  As with her other hospitalizations, it seems like heading off to war except that it's a child going and we can only provide company and bear witness.  For the four weeks prior to her admission she will go through a barrage of tests to check for any problems that may be lurking in her body and further complicate the procedure. When not attending to these matters we'll be trying to give Annie as normal a life as possible.  She had a bleeding event last Friday but we were able to stop it after a couple hours and didn't have to take her to the ER.  No bloody noses since then.  Her next transfusion is scheduled for Thursday.