Unexpected blood test results

Monday morning Bianca woke up pretty grumpy. And I thought "oh dear, here we go..." so we sat on the couch together for a bit until she felt happier.

Caitlyn's favourite past time, pressing buttons...

And the other favourite past time, eating. Anybody for a full body hug?

Later in the day Bianca saw Stella outside and she and Stella had lots of fun. It felt so good seeing Bianca so happy, having fun. Yesterday Terence took the girls to Staglands and he invited Stella and her mom Jenny to come along too. The girls really enjoyed it and they fed bunnies and ducks (and a beautiful swan) and had a pony ride. It is pretty cool that they live right next door.

Caitlyn had some fun as well:

The two girls loved feeding the ducks and swan:

And who can resist a cute bunny?

The highlight of the day:

Tonight Terence took Bianca to the hospital for a blood test. She has a number of bruises on her legs and arms and we just wanted to check it out. Of course Bianca just absolutely loves visiting the hospital and we really like the staff there. They are absolutely great with Bianca. I don't think I would have coped if she hated going.

So they waited a little bit and then came home with an instruction to keep an eye on the bruises and that they would phone us with the results. Pretty much as soon as they came the phone rang:

• Haemoglobin - 97
• Platelets - 57
• Neutrophils - 0.41

Oh dear - she is neutropenic! So now we'll have to wait and see what they say tomorrow morning whether they want to see her again, another blood test, stop chemo or whatever. I suspect at the very least they will lower her dose or even stop her chemo alltogether for a little bit to try and get those neutrophils up again. But that's one of the main side-effects of the chemo Bianca gets every single night. It does tend to lower neutrophils and that is why they often have to adjust the dosage.

So isolation at home yet again. I'm not sure how long she's been neutropenic because last time we checked she was sitting at 1.6, so of course we haven't been isolating her and right now we are just hoping she wasn't exposed to something horrible. So for the time being she'll have to stay away from other people.