Sunday, February 10, 2008

Happy 2nd Birthday










Katlyn is now 2 years old and cuter than ever. It really is incredible looking back on the past two years of life, seeing what she has been through, and how far she has come. It's incredible. Katlyn's birthday was spent at NIH, getting a large blood draw for research and an infusion of IVIG. We made up for it when we came home though. We had a birthday party for her, all decked out in Dora the Explorer. We felt nervous buying Katlyn a birthday cake, so instead I made one and it turned out great. I decorated after Katlyn went to bed so that when she woke up in the morining she would be surprised by all the balloons and party supplies. She was thrilled. Actually, the first thing she said was "that's crazy." She is so funny. John's parents came over and we had a great time. After we all had a peice of cake, Katlyn decided she was going to play with the cake. She started to drill her Dora figurines through the cake. You could really tell she was enjoying herself. All in all it was a fantastic day.
Right now Katlyn is enjoying a muffin when she asks me where her muffin went. I tell her she ate it and now it's her belly. She lifts up her shirt and starts rubbing her belly. "I checked everywhere." LOL!!!! A few minutes later she lets me know she found it on the tip of her finger. I look to find that indeed there is a little muffin crumb on the end of her finger. LOL!!!!
So the trip to NIH went pretty good. Katlyn's numbers were about the same. Her neautrophils were 700 and lymphocytes 218, which is the highest her lymphocytes have ever been. The rest of the test results will take a little time to come back, but I'll keep you posted. Other than that Katlyn biopsy for the marks on her body has come back and the sort of have a preliminary reading. Even still they are unsure of what they are seeing, because it is very rare. Throughout Katlyn's life we have been noticing these little indents on her body. They don't hurt, but as time goes on we do notice more. There are probably 9 or 10 known ones now. Well, the doctors seem to be leaning towards the possibility that these little marks are tumors. When they look at the slides they see spindle cells, which is very unusual. They believe that they are benign, and therefore as long as we get rid of them they shouldn't hurt Katlyn. So the doctors at NIH sent the slides to the specialist in the world in spindle cells. We're hoping to get a definite diagnosis soon so that these marks can be removed as soon as possible. We don't want them to become malignant, and threaten Katlyn's life again.
So right now we are pretty stressed out about the whole skin thing. We know that Katlyn is a little fighter and she will get through this too. It's just scary.