Lauren, mommy and baby Finlay are doing good and Marissa is doing good, too. I don't want to forget about her. I think she is already getting the middle child syndrome. It didn't help that Lauren's illness last year caused us to cancel her birthday party and then of course, Finlay's arrival was a day after Marissa's actual birthday, causing us to once again cancel her birthday party. We kept telling her we're going to delay her birthday until later, but she keeps bringing it up. So I think we're going to try and have a little get together next weekend.

Lauren has been feeling great (knock on wood). The better she feels the more adventurous she becomes. On Saturday, while Marissa was doing her gymnastics, Lauren tried jumping rope with her friend Camden and then later that night she tried riding her other friends Hannah and Hailey's bikes. Yesterday, while Auntie Say-Say and the other cousins and aunt were throwing Hilary a belated baby shower, I took the girls to the park. Lauren was flying around on her bike (at least in her and my mind). In reality she was two clicks above a crawl, which is fast for her. Marissa, on the other hand, was doing laps around her. But these are all good signs to me that Lauren is feeling good. She is still winded when she climbs the stairs in our house, having to crawl up that last two steps every time. Hilary has put her on the waiting list at CHOC for physical therapy. Looking back, we realize it was a mistake to withdraw her from it. But she was in such bad shape that we didn’t think she could do it, or that the doctor would want her to either. We had also missed so many appointments, and other kids were also waiting that we thought we should drop her from it. Oh well.

Hilary has an appointment for the first week of December to get the H1N1 shot, but Lauren or Marissa still haven't gotten theirs yet. Hil asked if the girls had to get it, but Hil's doctor said "no." I was SO happy to hear that the prison inmates in San Diego have all gotten theirs. That was a big relief to hear, because I as so worried.

It's unbelievable that CHLA still has not received any shipments of H1N1 vaccines for their patients. While I don't blame anybody for wanting to be vaccinated, there are certain groups of people that are definitely more at risk, like children with weakened immune systems, newborns, and pregnant or recently pregnant mothers. It just seems unbelievable that here we are at the end of Nov. and nobody in our house has gotten the H1N1 shot yet. At least everybody has gotten the regular flu shot, even though Marissa still needs one more (the doctor's office ran out of the regular flu shot too, we've been waiting for over two months for them to get another shipment). Neither girls have been in school since Sept. and we're not going to send them back until they have both gotten the swine flu shot. We can't risk it.

After over a year and a half, Lauren is now Decadron (steroid) free (knock on wood - as long as she doesn't get any headaches). As of Sunday, we've stopped her .1 mg of Decadron, however, she's still on the steroid Prednisone. You should have seen the look on Lauren's face when I told her no more Decadron, it was disbelief, relief and excitement. While it's a big deal to us, the doctors still think we're crazy. Ever since the dosage has been under 1 mg a day, the doctors don't think it's doing anything, but we know it was helping, because we know our daughter and we know when she is not acting right. Since the doctors don't think the small dosage is really doing anything, they have pretty much left it to me and Hilary to determine how much and when to adjust Lauren's Decadron. So we're calculating, since we have been told that Prednisone does the same thing as Decadron and Lauren is on 15 mg of Prednisone 2x a day. Right now is our opportunity to finally get her off Decadron. If she becomes dependant on Prednisone like she did on Decadron then it's at least better since Prednisone is not as strong as Decadron. Except one of the side affects of Prednisone is insomnia (other than causing puffiness), which Lauren has right now. She hasn't been getting a good night's sleep and is therefore looking and acting very tired during the day.

Auntie Say-Say, has completed her second round of high dose chemo and is set to be admitted on Wed., and will receive her stem cells back on Friday. Her stem cells were harvested in August or September. Once this round is completed, they (Her doctor and Dr. Finlay) will decide wether to do a 3rd round of chemo, or stop after this round.