Purple arms, platelets and petechia

I feel like I haven't been posting much about how Chelsea is feeling lately, but it's really because she's been doing so incredibly well. Once again, she's defying all odds. Today was Day 12 of our 6th cycle, and she has yet to show any signs of being on chemo. Last round by this time she was feeling the pain, so I keep questioning what the doctors really put in those IV bags for seven days.

Today Ryan, Logan and I went to eat lunch while Chelsea took a nap, then we headed over to the Ronald McDonald house to clean up (that's where Logan and I stayed this weekend). We hurried as much as we could, and the woman (the same one that was EXTREMELY rude to Ryan and I on my BIRTHDAY!!!) took forever while checking out our room. I told him she was probably determined to find something wrong with the room that we needed to fix because I didn't think she liked me very much. Well, she kept us just long enough, that by the time we got back to the hospital, Chelsea was awake

Not only was she awake, but I could hear her screaming all the way down the hall. When I got to the room, I heard Logan say, "oh no!" Chelsea had managed to get her arm stuck in the crib. There is this plastic that pulls down on all sides so she won't try to climb out, and there was just enough room for her to get her arm in between the fabric around the plastic and the crib railing, but she couldn't get it out. Her arm, hand and fingers were purple and she was screaming hysterically. I quickly freed her arm and pulled her from the crib and her arm slowly regained it's color. Within minutes though petechia started showing up all down her arm, not only around her bicep (where her arm was jammed) but all the way down to her hand. Poor little baby has very low platelets. The doctor ordered a CBC and her platelets were 29, very low, but not low enough to transfuse. We'll do her typically scheduled labs tomorrow, and if they drop under 20 they'll likely go ahead and give her a platelet transfusion. Until then, I'm a nervous wreck, making her wear her little helmet everywhere! I almost made her wear it to sleep, as I've learned when her platelets are low she tends to bruise her little head by sleeping against the hard rails on the crib. The little stinker was trying to reach something outside the crib. She had already torn off what clothing she had on, and she's notorious for grabbing anything she can reach from her crib, the phone, the nurse call light, anything.

As for the rest of her counts, her ANC, went up from 220 to 300. Her white blood count went up slightly as well. Her hemoglobin even rose from 9.3 to 9.7 ... in true Chelsea fashion. Don't worry, her counts aren't really rising, they tend to do this, it's like a trick she plays on us every round. So in a nutshell, platelets in the next couple of days and still WAITING for her counts to hit zero. As I say each round, her counts can't go up until they go down first!