Sophie's World

8:48 PM Another busy day here in Sophie's world. Sophie was pretty reluctant to return to Countryside today, after being at camp with Elisabeth all week last week. But, when I reminded her of all the things she can share with her teachers and friends, she eventually decided to go. Boy was I glad to see Mikayla Peterson and Sophie's new friend Tamara in the classroom when we got there! Sophie cheered right up at the sight of them and walked right into the classroom. Sounds like she and Tamara had a very busy day playing together today. Sophie got so dusty and dirty today at school, there was no question about a bath tonight. For a change, I got to do the dressing change, and that went reasonably well. We also had a CBC done today, and Sophie's counts are holding steady--not great, but strong enough to stay the course. We're going to keep her at 75% of the chemotherapy dose for a while, and we'll check again next week when we go to the clinic.

Elisabeth stayed home with me today. Actually, we had secret plans to run away to the beach, but since Mondays are typically my errand days (and there were plenty of errands to take care of), we quickly lost the chance to go to the beach. We consoled ourselves by spending a couple hours at a friend's swimming pool this afternoon, once all our errands were taken care of.

Susan went in to work today. I'm thankful for her sake and for ours that she is not going in all five days this week! It sounds as if things are slowly starting to break free as far as the stresses of her job right now, so hopefully the pressure that she has been under for quite some time will begin to ease up.

While I was at Annual Conference last week, I got to visit briefly with Cookie Santiago, who is the conference director for Hispanic/Latino ministries. Cookie's son, Diego, was diagnosed with cancer last year and has really had a tough time. We talked only a short amount of time, but it was clear that we shared the same feelings of empathy for any family and any child going through the ordeal of cancer and chemotherapy. In fact, Diego made a brief appearance at Annual Conference and it was quite touching to see him. We are so thankful for the great prognosis we have with Sophie's leukemia, but at the same time we are simply heartbroken by the countless stories of other children who have a much, much tougher time. We keep so many families and so many children in our thoughts and prayers, it is almost overwhelming to think about at times.