Hi Everyone,
Nora is doing amazingly well. She is up, dancing, playing balloon volleyball for hours, she keeps her yoga, karate, and dance teachers on their toes. She has really been putting our crafting skills to the test. Today we made a straw and pipe cleaner chandelier complete with construction paper candles. Her room is a magic garden with flowers and fairies and butterflies everywhere! Its so Nora… super girlie-girl yet she has turned her magic wand into a sword and makes time for practicing her fencing and martial arts… in a pink dress with a bow of course.
She has a “store” ‘Nora’s Glitter Shop’ where people can come by and get glitter tags for their IDs, glitter bookmarks, bedazzled bottle caps on safety pins, necklaces, bracelets and sun catchers. The floor is eternally covered in glitter. Every time Shawn or I leave we look like we have been at a rave… (if an exhausted middle aged couple went to a rave.)
The nurses cannot believe that she is only three weeks post-transplant and has yet to take a nap! The doctors have reduced her medicines on the IV drip. She is taking most meds by pill now and is on a ‘need basis’ for the anti-nausea medicine. (She hasn’t needed it.) She is still eating, still drinking her fluids and still a bundle of energy. The only way I can explain it is, last year she acclimated to life with no blood, now she is making blood and she doesn’t know what to do with it! It makes her super-hyper! Everyone walks in sees her jumping and bouncing and is shocked.
Her doctor is thinking that if all goes well, and her tacrolimus (medicine) levels stay even now that she is on pills, and she continues making blood at the rate she is now—that she may be discharged next week! If that is the case, we’ll be at the Ronald McDonald House early. She still has to come in every day, outpatient for a month or so. During that time we won’t have the benefit of the “clean room” and Nora will once again have to be the one with the mask on, instead of the other way around like it is now.
She still has a ways to go and she won’t be declared “Aplastic Anemia Free” until May 24th 2014. But if she keeps this up she will be a normal kids again by Christmas. Please continue to pray for her. All these prayers from around the world have been giving us the strength we need to do this. THANK YOU!!!!
Love Always,
The Getchells
norasstars 