On Friday we headed down to Grandma and PopPop's house for a little R&R. On Sat everyone came over for the Christmas party. Lauren got to see Aunts, Uncles and cousins that she hadn't seen in quite a while. We weren't able to do this last year because of her low immune system. It was great to watch her running around playing like a normal 3 year old. She absolutely loves Grandma's little dog Candy and spent quite a bit of the weekend playing with her. We spent a quiet New Year's eve at home eating takeout and watching movies. Mike, Val and Devon came over to ring in the New Year with us. Lauren didn't make it til the ball dropped but Timmy did. In fact Bill and Timmy satyed up til 3am watching the last movie. I was long into LaLa land by then.
On Sunday Jan 6th, Lauren and I headed back to the city for Round 8 of antibodies. We finished up and came home this past Friday. Lauren was actually excited to go back to RMH/clinic. She was looking forward to seeing some of her friends there. We did get to hook up with a couple of friends that we hadn't seen in a long while and it was great catching up. The round went well with less pain than any previous round. She still had pain on some days but not the kind that would make her sit up and scream. The pain meds (dilaudid) did a good job of controlling it but boy does that stuff make her nasty. It has always had that effect on her but this round she didn't sleep as much so it was more apparent. I took to calling her Linda Blair again! We also did a Cat scan during this round just to check on some things and everything was clear Yeah! We'll be doing all of her scans when we go back next time in March. HAMA blood will be drawn on Jan 31st so I should have those results by the first week in Feb.
Now that we're back home Lauren will start back up with school and PT. She hasn't been in preschool since the first week in December and she is really looking forward to going back tomorrow. Since we finally got a bit of snow last night, we took the kids across the street to the school today to go sledding. We met up with a whole bunch of friends and had a blast. We had tubes, snowboards, sleds - anything that would go down a hill. Everyone commented on how this was the first time Lauren was able to join us in the last two years. She was afraid to go on the tubes by herself but had no problems with her sled and by the end was doing it "no hands" shouting "Whoo Hoo look at me" all the way down! And as I stood looking down the hill at her I thought about how far she has come in these last two years......Whoo Hoo, look at me is right!
As always - thanks for checking in on us and for remembering Lauren in your prayers
