Saturday, April 23, 2005: Leela has been feeling surprisingly good this past week. Its been a little over a week since her second course of chemo. We were prepared for something similar to her reaction to the first course. Instead, she was more than ready to go back to school on Monday. The chemo finally caught up with her on Friday. For the first morning this past week, Maya was out of bed and dressed before Leela. Leela was quite tired and did not really want to go to school, so she stayed home. But the level of fatigue was much less than what we saw after her first course of chemo. Except for Friday Leela has gone to school every day this past week.

In the afternoon Geetha took her to the clinic for an appointment. Her blood levels have fallen, so she is susceptible to infection and her red blood cell count is low—which explains the fatigue. Otherwise everything looks pretty good. The doctor thinks that her blood levels are probably bottoming out, so she should be on her way up in the next couple of days or so.

We continue to get a lot of support from family and friends. Last week and this week we received from really great meals.