Friday!

Its Friday afternoon and we are still here! We hope to be able to come home tomorrow. Grant hasn't had a fever for several days now, and his ANC finally seems to be on the move upward. His white blood cell count, hemoglobin, platelet count, and monocyte count were all considerably better today, and his ANC had gone from 0.0 to 0.1. An increase in WBC and monocyte counts is usually a precurser to an increase in ANC, so we are hopeful that we will have a little jump up tomorrow. If so, we will be heading home.

Mama is on her way back to the island now. Kevin will come up to Chapel Hill again this evening after work. Eden is enjoying the day at Emily McGee's house. She is in heaven with Emily and Ms. Martha! Jake is spending the day with Joella. Grandma will take over as his guardian when she gets home. Joella will be spending the afternoon at the blood drive at church.

Grant had a special visit from his friend Phyllis today. She was his nurse in the pediatric operating room during the week of his diagnosis. She drew lots of pictures with her patient and promised Grant a drawing of a basketball player the last time we saw her. Since then, for nearly 3 months now, everytime we have come up to clinic Grant has asked about Phyllis. We have tried to find her on several occasions, but this is a really big place and we hadn't had much luck. SO - yesterday I went down to the 2nd floor to do some laundry and ran into Phyllis in the hall. She was so kind and remembered her promise to Grant. So, today, in 101 degree temperatures, and on her day off, Phyllis came back to the hospital to visit Grant! I really can't express to everyone how kind all of the staff of the Children's Hospital has been to us. We feel so blessed to have found our way here! Many thanks, Phylly!!!

I will update again when I know more!