Thursday, May 19th: Leela has been in the hospital since Sunday night. After a few days of sleeping a lot and generally being miserable, today she was back to feeling pretty good. She ate three solid meals—the other days she would eat breakfast but skip lunch and dinner.

While it is dangerous to expect anything regarding someone on chemotherapy, we “expect” Leela to be able to come home either Friday or Saturday. The sticking point with the doctors is her ANC level (a measure of her immunity to bacterial infections). Yesterday her ANC was 132. Today it was 60. A week ago today, before she received this cycle of chemo, Leela’s ANC was around 2400. Anything below 500 is considered profoundly immune deficient. At this point, to be released from the hospital she needs to be somewhere near 250. This evening Maya came to the hospital for a visit. To the surprise of the doctors, Maya and Leela ended up playing hopscotch in the elevator lobby of the hospital. (Hopefully the doctors were thinking ‘Leela needs to go home tomorrow.’)

Geetha and I have been doing alternating 24-hour shifts at the hospital. (Tonight is my night to be home.) We started out in a private room. On Sunday night when we were admitted it was the only room available on the Hematology/Oncology Unit. Last night at 4:45a.m. we were moved to a shared room to make space for a child who needed to be isolated. We were lucky to have the private room for as long as we did, but I was not happy to be moved in the middle of the night.

It has been great to have my father and Susan (my step-mom) staying with us during this time. They have been a big help. We have also received some great meals from the early childhood teachers at Maya’s school and the Petersons and Caldwells.