Lauren also had her three month scans during this round. For some reason every time she has scans scheduled something always goes wrong. This time it was forgetting to give us the contrast that she was supposed to drink before the CT scan on Tuesday. That caused the scan to be cancelled. No problem though cause we still had another week of antibodies so they rescheduled it for the next Thursday. It made it a full week with bone scan Monday, MIBG injection Tuesday and MIBG scan Wednesday but still ok. Then on Monday afternoon I get a call that all the MIBG injections for the next day were being cancelled (something about a bad batch of isotope) so therefore no scan on Wed. The only opening they had was for Thurday. Great! Now Lauren had two scans scheduled for the same day with overlapping times! Finally it was decided to do the MIBG scan then and just forget the CT scan as we could do that one at home. whew! as I said...it's always something! And I'm happy to report that all scans so far are NEGATIVE! She is still NED YEAH!!
We got to do some fun things at RMH this trip. One night we went to the Big Apple Circus which was a lot of fun. There were a few dinners with clowns and magicians. A wild west party with cowboy hats and BBQ food. And of course Bingo. Two nights Lauren was able to get her face painted. Once she was a butterfly (of course!) and then a tiger. Both were really awesome. We also named Lauren the official dog greeter for RMH. Anytime she saw a dog she would yell to the owner "Scuse me, can I pet your dog...just for a minute? Almost everyone said yes and Lauren's one minute would turn into 5 or 10. She even asked one lady if she could borrow her dog. She reassured the woman that she didn't want to keep it, just borrow him for a little while.
We've been keeping pretty busy since we've been home. Shortly after we got home Friday, Sharon came over to watch the kids so Bill & I could go out to dinner for our 10th anniversary. Thanks Sharon!! On Saturday Timmy had his last soccer game of the season. And when we got home we were happy to see that Grandma, Pop Pop & Melissa had stopped by for a visit. Lauren loved showing them all the Halloween decorations and Timmy was happy that they brought up Pumpkin pie!
On Sunday we went to a fundraiser at Timmy's school across the street. It was called "Trunk or Treat". There were about 80 cars parked in the lot with their trunks opened and decorated for Halloween. Bill decorated the truck in a Men in Black theme with all kinds of aliens complete with him dressed up as an MIB agent. He really did a great job. Once everyone was set up they put out bowls of candy and the kids went around trick or treating to all the cars. Lauren was dressed as a tiger and Timmy a skeleton. Their costumes looked great. All the kids had a blast as well as us parents too!
On Tuesday Timmy was sent home sick from school. He had a low grade fever and a severe headache. Well, by 6 pm his fever was up to 105 so we took a trip to the ER in Newton. He was not a happy camper about having to go to the hospital. He was afraid they were going to keep him there overnight. They ran some bloodwork, said it looked like a viral infection and thankfully sent us home. Unfortunately he had to miss school on Halloween which meant he missed the parade and parties :-( He did however get to go out trick or treating that night so he didn't mind too much.
Lauren was excited because Jen & Devon came over to go trick or treating with us. She couldn't wait to get her costume on and go out. She had just enough energy to go around the block. By the time we got almost all the way around she had decided she had enough candy and wanted to go home. What a difference from last year though. Then she had only made it to 4 or 5 houses and had to be carried up to all of them.
It's hard to believe it was one year ago yesterday that we checked into the hospital and Lauren started her last chemo for transplant. Thursday Nov. 8th (Timmy's birthday) marks her one year anniversary. That's the day she received her stem cells back. After PT today Lauren and I went over to the hospital to visit Billy who was having his last day of radiation. We all went up to the floor to say Hi to the nurses. It was weird looking at "our" room and thinking back to this time last year.
I am so thankful for where we are today and for how far Lauren has come. I want to thank everyone that has helped us through the last 20 months.. We sincerely appreciate all that you have done and all of the continued thoughts and prayers.
