The Bandwagon

It is with tremendous joy and great gratitude that I finally get to write some good news about Elisa! Many of you have already heard, or seen on the Team Bond Facebook page, that Elisa had a CT scan late Thursday and that we received the results this morning. If you have, I bet reading good news like this again isn’t a big drag: The tumors that were on her pelvis and spine have left some small amounts of scaring where they used to be (as in they have been evicted, kicked out, killed, ran away, beaten off, ousted …..). Her liver also shows great improvement. Although many metastasis remain, many are gone! It is nice to see that although Elisa and I seem to get our bad news together, we also get our good news together. I have been over the moon with happiness for most of the day. Thank you all for the continual support and optimism you have given us throughout this journey. I am now really starting to feel that we have rounded a metaphorical corner and are able to see the home stretch.

The week leading up to this good news was a long and stressful one. However I think that this has made our collective sign of relief that much greater. Elisa and I had been sick for several days last week, and were feeling really under the weather by the weekend. Monday morning Elisa developed a fever and had to be admitted to the NYU hospital for monitoring. Her white blood counts were very low – 500 k/ul (the bottom end of normal is 1,800 k/ul). So she was given the regular course of treatment, and still on Tuesday they had dropped further to 200. By Wednesday they were all the way down to 100, with a platelet count of 41! Although the fever broke and she was feeling better (other than not having any good TV to watch) they won’t let you go home with numbers like that. They did a CT of her face to make sure things in her sinuses were ok and to see if they needed to drain them, which they did not have to do. On Thursday her count started to rise, reaching 200. Before coming down with this cold, Elisa was scheduled to have her progress PET scan on Tuesday to see how the bone and liver tumors were reacting to the chemotherapy. Unfortunately she was not able to have this done because of being admitted. Which as it turns out wouldn’t have happened anyway as our insurance changed their mind for the third time in a two-week period and re-denied approval of the procedure as “not medically necessary”. Really? Really?
So on Thursday afternoon they preformed a CT with contrast (in lieu of the PET scan) to look at her tumors. We got those wonderful results you read about at the beginning of this update from that scan. Also her WBC counts are up to 200 and if they continue this trend they will let her come home tomorrow.  Which is really good news, cause Sadie and I are missing her something terrible. In fact Sadie has been pointing to the computer often and saying, “I see, mommy I see?” It seems she has a good understanding of how Skype works. So Sadie and Elisa got to talk over the computer last night. But then this morning Sadie wanted more, so we watched videos of her and mommy for 15 minutes before she went to daycare. It is heartbreaking in the sweetest way. I have been really trying to soak up my time with Sadie this week. I am not looking forward to being apart from her and Elisa for the week after my surgery, but riding a wave of good news into it sure does make it a lot easier to bear!