Just being Normal

Let me share with you how wonderful it feels to just be normal again. I will take a boring old, nothing exciting, no shocking news kind of day over some of the more packed full ones that I have lived with my Ashley during the past six months. Today was just a getting back to normal day. We did normal things like, waking the kids up to shower, driving them to school, running forgotten belongings back up to the school, cleaning bedrooms, fielding phone calls coming from all sorts of directions, searching for contractors, plumbers, air conditioner men and the like, running to the office, picking up kids from school, managing home work, and then the finale; sitting down together for dinner around the table and catching up with everybody. How great it was to sit down and enjoy dinner with my family as opposed to my frozen burrito and bag of popcorn from the convenience store down stairs at the hospital. Before dinner our Allison took the time to create name cards for everyone's place at the dinner table. I think she did it mostly because she is very glad I am home and she wants to make sure no one else gets to sit next me. Each card had a personalized printing of the person's name and some sort of design on it. Blake's had a baseball, Allison's a flower, Ashley's a heart with a flower in it, etc. etc. When Graypa sat down and saw his name plate and the line that was drawn under his name Allie looked at him and said, "What? Its not like you are boring or anything. That's all I could come up with." That silly girl. She continues to crack me up with her silliness. Anyway, I just found myself enjoying the normalcy and the company that I am allowed to share with this group of people.

Before dinner I received a call from the transplant team. It is never a good feeling when you receive a message to call them. Especially when they take the time to call you after hours. So with fear and trembling I returned the call. They are concerned about Ashley's white blood cell count. There doesn't really seem to be one. She has hit what is called the "nadir" period and this means that for a few days she actually has very little defense against germs or disease. They wanted to make sure that we had already been in contact with an oncologist and that we were scheduled to see them before long. They reminded me to be very, very careful with her, to wear masks around her, and not to take her out anywhere. I assured them we would all place out masks on, that we were all showering and changing clothes as we entered the house before touching her, and that she was not going out anywhere. What a scary time this happens to be in our Ashley's story. She looks really great, but she is so fragile. We are actually scheduled for an oncology appointment this Thursday in Dallas and her chemo treatment is to follow that. I expect it to be a very long day, but I am praying we can beat the 16 hour day we spent getting treatment last week. I suppose they will have to decide if it is safe to run the chemo with her counts so low or not. On Monday morning we will be back in Dallas to receive her monthly Cytogam infusion. They made this appointment for me at 7:45a.m. I think that is insane! I am hoping to remind them that I live 2 and 1/2 hours away and that it makes for a really long day when I have to be up and driving by 3:30. Surely they will see how unreasonable this is. That infusion will be followed by an appointment with our GI doctors in Dallas. That should be kind of fun because they haven't seen Ash since we left in August and she only weighed 12lbs at that time. I am looking forward to that visit.

Well, all things are now quiet here at Grandmas house and I have been given the opportunity to sneak in and kiss those precious foreheads. I love just being normal. I am going to go and take my opportunity to stand and linger over each of my "babies" for as long as it feels good(I may be standing there until morning), but the blessing is that I am "home" and that I can. Thank you all for praying for us today. I pray that each of you are blessed as you sleep and that each of you were given the opportunity to kiss you own sweet "babies" good night. Take care. Trish