Day +69 and doing well

Today was Olivia's long day at clinic. Every Wednesday Olivia is admitted to the day hospital for her weekly IVIG infusion. The IVIG is like an immune system boost. It takes a couple of hours for the medicine to infuse into her system and they have to check her vitals (blood pressure and temp) throughout the infusion process. Olivia gets to sit in a little private room with a sliding glass door. Since we're in a private room she gets to take off her mask. The child life art teacher is always around to provide fun crafty activities. On Wednesdays Olivia gets to see her teacher for a quick visit. She also gets to see her nurse practitioner a couple of times and her primary physician, Dr. Paul.

Our visit today went well. Olivia's numbers are looking great! Her white blood count is 14.2 and she hasn't needed red blood in several weeks. Her platelet count is up to 100 which is great news since the platelets are the last to grow. It can take anywhere from 60 to 200 days post transplant for platelets to return to the 100 mark so the doctor was pleased.

Today was also Olivia's first visit to clinic with a port. I think that it will take a little getting used to but I think we're all going to prefer having a port rather than the tubies. I am not able to access the port, it has to be done by a medical professional. They put some cream on the area to numb the skin then they insert a needle into the port. The needle is attached to a small tube that looks and functions the same way her previous tubie did. The numbing cream definitely helped, Olivia didn't feel the needle going in at all but she did feel it when they were removing the bandage that was placed on the area following yesterday's surgery. It was nice not to have to worry about a dressing change or cap changes today at clinic. Since I'm not able to draw Olivia's blood by myself in the mornings and drop it off at the lab we will now have to go to clinic earlier in the day so that they can draw her labs. After 7 days Olivia will be able to take a bath and we won't have to worry at all about getting the area wet. With her tubies it was quite a process to get her ready for a bath. I'm so glad that we don't have to deal with that anymore! I can't wait to give Olivia a nice bubble bath next week!