“Mommy, please can I have a playdate…”, little Autum sked today. It is dreadful to be held hostage in one’s own home, especially at the age of four. We have to be so cautious for about a week or two to make sure she doesn’t contract one of the numerous bugs going around so she doesn’t wind up in the hospital with a fever. Avoiding fevers, that’s the focus this week. She is neutropenic, the term given to someone with a very low white blood cell count. It is a very common occurrence among many chemo patients during the course of their treatment.

Lice has been on the rise at school recently. For once, there is something that Autumn cannot get…she can roll around in a bed of lice and they just can’t stick, what a weird but marvelous thought!

Wednesday I will take her to Sierra for a blood draw to determine the potential for a blood transfusion. One day at a time, but at this point she is still so full of energy! We stopped at a pet store today where Autumn discovered her love of rats, why not?! A pet rat may be good for her, she can love and care for something so small, it may be very helpful for her.

I mentioned to a friend the other day that Autumn has only about 6-7 weeks left for her treatments. “It seems like it’s been forever!” she exclaimed. Indeed it does but I know someday we will all look back on this year and wonder how we ever made it through! It is incredible to me how humans find the strength to move forward in times of trouble. How many people have encountered such turmoil and chaos in their lives and yet they carry on. The man that I had met while in Santa Barbara last week just lost his wife yesterday. If you remember the story, she is the one who had ovarian cancer but it was so late, too late and she couldn’t destroy it. I felt numb all day, I felt so terribe for her husband and their family. The woman was only about 60, still a lot to live for.

On a similar note, our neighbor just had surgery to remove 1/3 of her right lung due to lung cancer. She smoked for over 30 years, but then she stopped 20 + years ago, how disheartening! My girls have been so sweet with her as they have baked her cookies and spent some time just being with her. We really don’t know that much about her, who knew that we would connect over this type of similarity.