Sodium

So...we are still in the hospital, but at least we now know what the problem is. The chemo can cause some of your other systems/hormones to get out of wack. Sheridan's body is retaining fluid and that is diluting her electrolytes, specifically her sodium. This causes many side effects so they need to keep a close eye on it. Now that they know what it is they are treating it with diuretics and limited fluid intake. So far today her sodium has continually gone up...they need to see this continue and stay up in normal ranges in order for us to leave. Keep your fingers crossed, but today was a good start. Sheridan has been feeling pretty lousy because of the electrolyte imbalances so we are glad that they seem to be getting this under control. She is better tonight and hopefully will continue to feel better tomorrow. We will let you know when we get released. Lots of love!

Update

We enjoyed being home for a few days this past week. It was really nice to sleep in our own beds! But, Sheridan had to be readmitted late Friday night because she was dehydrated. Her electrolytes are doing some funny things that they are trying to find an explanation for. Hopefully we will know more later today and then be able to go home tomorrow. She is feeling a little better today and Mimi and Papa are bringing Sam down to play. I am on Spring Break this week so we are hoping that we are not couped up here for much longer. We will keep you posted...

Awesome Day!

Sheridan's leukemia is in remission!!! We went back down to CNMC today for Sheridan's bone marrow aspiration and just before dinner one of her doctor's called to say that she is in remission :) We are beyond thrilled and relieved. Ralph and Mitch were here today and played with Sam while we were gone. They also made us a delicious dinner! I even got to go to Target with my mom. We enjoyed our dinner and then had some much needed family time at home :) We are so excited that Sheridan is in remission and that we are home together. We are saying our prayers that she stays healthy so we can all stay at home! Thank you everyone for all of your prayers and support...we love you!

We are home!!!

We made it home today!!! We are so happy to be at home and all together as a family. It was a very long 2 weeks. Tomorrow we have to get up early and head back down to CNMC so she can have her bone marrow aspiration and chemo treatment. We will let everyone know how that goes. I just wanted to let everyone know we are home and hope to stay here for a while.

Sheridan is signing go home
just before we left the hospital today :)

Think good thoughts...

Today Sheridan's doctors told us that we might be able to go home in the morning :) She has had a zero blast count in her blood for 2 days...which is also hopeful that she will be in remission on Tuesday when she has her next bone marrow aspiration! She still has a low white count, but has managed to go for a while without a fever, so they will let us go tomorrow if her counts hold steady in the morning. We will keep everyone updated. Keep your fingers crossed!!!

Many of you have asked about donating blood and a few have already scheduled to do so. They are in need of O blood and platelets in particular this month, but will accept any blood type. My aunt Tricia put together the info on the hours and making an appointment. Let me know if you have any questions :)

Address: Children's National Medical Center
111 Michigan Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20010

The Blood Donor Center is located on the second floor of the hospital in room 2700, the Blood Donor Center’s hours of operation are:

Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7 am to 4 pm
Wednesdays from 7 am to 2:30 pm
Fridays from 7 am to 3:30 pm

They are also open the following Saturdays from 8 am to 4 pm:
March 27
April 10
April 24

It will take between 45 minutes and 3 hours, depending on the type of donation.

Schedule an appointment online at https://www.cnmcblooddonor.com/
or by calling 202-476-KIDS (5437). If you have any trouble, ask for Angela.

Please let them know your donation is in honor of Sheridan Blinn. The blood bank will track the number of donations in her honor. Your donations will help make sure that Sheridan gets the blood she needs when she needs it.

Thank you!!! Hopefully we will have more good news tomorrow :)

Hanging out

We are still here hanging out...tomorrow makes 2 weeks. We are keeping ourselves busy with a variety of art projects and movies. She is still having fun everyday and loves seeing Sam. Tonight she was talking to Patrick and he asked her if there was something special from home that she would like him to bring in the morning and her response was, "Sam". They love eachother so much! Sheridan was pretty tired today because her counts are so low. She is getting some red blood cells overnight tonight which should perk her up by morning. We will most likely be here until her next bone marrow aspiration on Tuesday--but we will keep you posted if they let us out sooner.

Sheridan & Sam enjoying making "dot art"--one of their favorite things to do!

Today's news...

We got the results of Sheridan's bone marrow aspiration today...she came in last week with 70% blasts (cancer cells) in her marrow and this week she is down to 25%, so we are making good progress. It's possible that next week she could be in remission so say a prayer :) We are still keeping our fingers crossed that we may be able to go home before the weekend. Her white counts came up today, but still need to be higher to get discharged.

Something I have not mentioned yet is how susceptible Sheridan is to infection. Her white counts (white blood cells fight infection) will be very low throughout this process. We love you all and want to see you all but need you to be VERY careful about germs when you visit. This means that if you think you may not feel right, do NOT come. If Sheridan gets a fever it is an automatic hospitalization for antibiotics. They have to be very careful because with a low white count her body will not fight off an infection and therefore she will need the antibiotics to do it for her. I am not sending this info to scare anyone, but rather so you can help us keep her healthy. ALL OF THIS APPLIES TO SAM AS WELL...we live in the same house, so if Sam gets something then she probably will get it, we need to keep him healthy in order to keep her healthy.

Everyone was so helpful after her heart surgery with following the rules and we made it through the entire 6 weeks without her getting sick in the middle of flu season. We are back to there again. We will be religious about hand washing and NOT KISSING Sheridan. We know that you love her very much, but kisses on the face pass germs. We simply cannot afford to share germs in any way. Also you will need to change your clothes before visiting Sheridan if you have been in public places like Target, schools, doctor's offices etc.

Another area that she is particularly at risk is in her digestive track. This means you must wash your hands before preparing her food and there can be NO sharing of food or drink with her. Let me know if you have any questions that we can answer :)

We will keep you posted if it looks like we are going home in the next few days :)

A new place to play :)

Today Child Life--a program that tries to keep the kids happy while they are here--came and brought Sheridan this awesome mat so she can play on the floor comforably. She loved having a new place to play!















And ofcourse she also painted :)













Her procedures today went very well...she was not phased by them at all. We will have more test results in a day or two. More then...love you all!

Family time

For the first time in over a week the four of us had some quality time together. We just laid around, watched cartoons and played with toys. It was awesome!!!

I got to spend some much needed time with my sweet boy :)



Sheridan has her procedures/chemo tomorrow, but we probably won't have results before Wednesday or Thursday from the lab. Talk to you soon...

Keeping busy...

I thought you all might like to see how Sheridan has been keeping busy this week. She loves to paint at school and here at the hospital they have art therapists who have been bringing her paint and brushes and paper almost everyday. She loves it!



Today was another good day.
Kevin and Alyse came down for a few hours and we had a lot of fun :) Amy and Cristina also came down to see Sheridan. Sheridan loves seeing everyone and can't wait to be home. Tuesday she will receive her second dose of chemo (it is once a week this month) and hopefully at somepoint this week we will be able to go home.

Some new info...

We want to thank everyone for all of your support. We have not been able to respond to emails yet, but will get there.

Sheridan had another good day today :) The anti-nausea meds are working great and she is eating like usual. We got to see Sam again today and that made us all feel better. We cannot wait to be home so we can all be together.

The other piece of great news is that Sheridan did not have blasts in her spinal fluid!!!

We talked with her oncologist today about donor directed blood. This situation is entirely different than her surgeries in the past. Throughout this process she will need blood products, but it will be random and without much notice. This means that having donor directed blood for her is almost impossible. What they recommend, if people want to help, is to come in and donate blood to the blood bank. This way the blood bank is fully stocked whenever Sheridan needs products. We can put you in touch with the right people if you would like more info about donating at CNMC. They are always in need. We cannot thank you enough for being willing to donate.

More tomorrow :)

Taking it all in...

We have learned a lot in the last few days. It is hard to believe we have been here for a week!

Sheridan has Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia or ALL. If you want to know more about ALL her doctors have recommended the website www.curesearch.org. ALL is the most successfully treated form of Leukemia and Sheridan has already started her treatment. She had a bone marrow biopsy and a spinal tap on Tuesday. At the same time she had a port placed under her skin in her chest. It feeds directly into a large vein and means that she does not need to have IVs any more. She gets meds and fluids through it and can have blood drawn from it. No more needle sticks :)

While Sheridan was in the OR she received her first chemo drug directly into her spinal fluid and then she recieved her second med that night through her port. She is also taking a steroid orally each day that helps make everything more effective. She is doing great! She has periods when she doesn't feel so hot because she gets a fever, but that will decrease as the cancer goes into remission. They expect she will be in remission by day 7 or day 14.

Her chemo is divided into phases...this face is called induction and lasts 28 days. She receives her chemo drugs every 7 days. The first several phases take 4-6 months and are the more intense part of her treatment. After that she will move into the maintenece phase where she will only get a treatment once a month and it will be a much lower dose.

Once we are released from the hospital she will receive her chemo on an outpatient basis and some of the time we will be able to go the CNMC satelite in Rockville, just around the corner from the restaurant. In order to leave the hospital she has to meet certain criteria which include being fever free for 48 hours and having a high enough white count. We hope to go home sometime this week. She is on the right track as of now and her blood counts are responding to the chemo exactly as they should. So keep your fingers crossed :)

Not what we were expecting...

We took Sheridan to the ER last Saturday afternoon because she spiked a fever after having a cold all week. She did not have an ear infection or pneumonia so they did some blood work to rule out any other infections. They actually discharged us after the first round of lab results came back...but we were called back before we had gotten on 270.

Her blood counts were off so they wanted us to come back, draw a new sample and see what that showed. After a couple of hours they came back and said that they were suspicious of leukemia and wanted to run some more tests to rule it out.

So...we were transfered by ambulance to Children's National Medical Center (CNMC) overnight. Because it was the weekend we were pretty much just hanging out on Sunday and then Monday morning they drew blood to send to the lab.

Monday afternoon they confirmed that Sheridan does infact have ALL--Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. In a matter of minutes we went from 2 doctors in the room to about 10 people in the room. They gave us a binder and got to work explaining what we were in for. It was very overwhelming. We are slowly becoming experts in something we never wanted to know anything about.

We have an excellent team of doctors, including her pediatrician who knows her best and has been talking with us daily. Because we are at CNMC all of her specialists are available to consult as needed and several already have. They are all confident that she will handle this challenge with the same strength that she has handled past challenges--this will be another obstacle she has overcome!