Sophie's World

9:50 PM (Randall posting): Another pleasant day. Susan spent most of the day in "meetings" on the phone. As she put it, at least she could spend that time at home, instead of driving in to work just to be on the phone (she was in a conference with folks all over the US, so they were all on the phone). We finalized the purchase of our new car today, and it is still a huge relief. I'll drive it to Durham tomorrow for the first commute (eye appointment and trip to Duke).

Sophie and Elisabeth had a special treat today. Elisabeth's dance teacher (Janice Godwin) offered to teach the two of them a special "class." It mostly consisted of the girls dancing and flitting about while they listened to music and Janice encouraged them to learn dance positions and movements. It really was a great treat and it was so incredibly nice of Janice to offer. Sophie mostly wanted to jump, skip, and run, but Elisabeth was very much into dancing. Afterwards, Sophie seemed a little jittery so we got her a muffin and some Gatorade. She's not been so good about eating today. I wonder if the chemotherapy is beginning to affect her tastes. We noticed this evening that Sophie is beginning to bruise again on her knees, hips, and elbows. That's a good indicator that her platelets are beginning to drop, which for her are the first cell counts to go. We are not quite halfway through this round of chemotherapy, so that means we've got a good deal of "stuff" to get through and it may get pretty ugly.

Yesterday, the endocrinologist phoned to say that the tests they ran on Sophie while she was in the hospital were inconclusive, meaning they didn't really indicate why her blood sugars dropped so low. One test, using blood from her central line, actually showed blood sugars not too far off from normal, but still low. That particular reading seemed to confound everything else for the doctors, since the numbers weren't so low that they could reckon them against other numbers (like Sophie's insulin level, which was normal). Then he asked if we had been tracking her blood sugar at home, which we haven't, mostly because we are so intimidated and frightened of having to poke her to get the blood for the meter.

After feeling terribly guilty about this for a whole day, I dragged out the meter tonight and Susan and I tested it on each other. Our blood sugars were both normal (for post-dinner) and we discovered that the lancet doesn't really hurt (our meter uses the smallest needle on the market). We're going to try it on Sophie in the morning (who was watching the whole time Susan and I were getting squeamish about poking each other and at one point said, "I can hold your hand, Daddy.") She seemed pretty convinced that it didn't hurt. We'll see how she does in the morning!