Clinic Day!

Today was a clinic visit complete with Lumbar Puncture and a spinal injection of methotrexate. Cora's protocol includes and LP every fourth month. I always dread it because she can't eat beforehand and I hate when she gets put to sleep. So I was dreading today and it was my first day being a mom of 3 all alone! (but not really cause I've got great friends two of whom have insisted on taking Cade to school for the next month!!!) So off we headed to clinic, Cora, Clara, and mama. We got there almost on time and from the get go Cora was a champ!!! I feel like I say this each time lately, but it was her BEST VISIT EVER! She was sweet, cooperative, well-mannered, and perfectly behaved. She was very excited to introduce Clara to her clinic friends. Clara slept the ENTIRE time we where there (whew!) and we were in, juiced up, and done in two and a half hours! Cora's counts were great and her immune system is functioning beautifully so Dr. J actually increased her medication dosage to 87% of her original dosage. We had to decrease it because of low counts before Christmas. We're slowly increasing as her body seems to tolerate more. So we are hoping this new increase won't bring any major changes to her blood counts. We also noted that Cora is picking up weight quickly and I asked Dr. J to chart her on the growth curve to make sure it's normal and this year Cora has grown FOUR inches! Normal growth for someone her age is 2 or so inches per year, but chemo slows growth and many times when kids finally reach maintenance their bodies play catch up for the past several months of strong chemo! Not only is she feeling great, but she's catching up as well! So yay! yay! yay! Cora! Now we have 5 days of crabby Cora on steroids and then we'll get our sweet girl back! Oh, the best part of today was after clinic in the car I was praising Cora for doing such a great job at clinic and she said, "mama, you know why I did so great at clinic today?" I replied, "why?" She said, "because I wanted to show my baby that going to the doctor isn't scary!!!" And that is exactly what she did!