Great exam and xray results. (250th post)

Emily is doing really well. She and I had a fantastic ski weekend up in Tahoe. Emily experienced her first heavy snow storm as it snowed around 18 inches between Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening. Due to an issue with car keys ;-) she and I had to stay up an extra night and miss work and school on Monday. (I lost our car keys in the snow putting on tire chains.) I am still amazed that Emily and I got in two ski trips this season. A year ago I didn't picture her treatment going this well. Even looking back at photos from last fall, she really has bounced back to her old self.

Today was her monthly IV Chemo and physical exam. She also had her quarterly chest X-Ray. (every quarter she gets either a chest x-ray or a CT Scan.) The results of the chest X-Ray were great. The small mass of scar tissue in her chest is even smaller than last time they looked at it. It has gotten smaller and smaller each time they have scanned her. To remind you, this mass isn't a tumor but scar tissue left over from the massive tumor she had the collapsed her lung and displaced her heart when she was first diagnosed. Without doing a biopsy they can't say with certainty that it's not cancerous, but there are many signs that it is just scar tissue. Dr. Link says he sees this type of scar tissue often and he's not worried that it is anything bad. With 30+ years of Oncology under his belt, I trust whatever he says. Dr. Link was not there today, he is in Washington D.C. at a conference. We were seen by Karolina our N.P. who is our main contact for Emily's care. Emily's physical exam also went very well, no concerns. She had her labs drawn and her blood levels have really rebounded, her ANC was 2200, so we are going to increase her chemo dosage to %75 per the protocol. I hope with flu season winding up that we don't have to reduce dosage again for a while, but we will see.

On Monday night Emily had her meeting with the Make-A-Wish foundation. For now I am not going to share what she wished for, but once it is official I will let you all know. I do want to say something about Make-a-Wish based on some questions and concerned comments I have received. A child DOES NOT need to be terminal to receive a Wish. Before I knew much about Make-A-Wish I thought that was the case. One of my friends at work was also under this impression and wondering why I was so happy she was getting a wish. So, no worries many kids who receive Wishes go on to live normal healthy lives. You do need to have a malignant type of disease to qualify, which Emily has.

This is the 250th post of Emily's blog, thanks for following.