Special helper

Shania is going for radiation today to help reduce some of her pain in the tail bone. She went for a bone scan yesterday and Dr Baruchel said that they found that she has a lesion or tumour where your nerves bundle together at the base of your spine, and this is why she is in excruciating pain most of the time, it 's called Neuropathic pain. Which is as he explains is like having a tooth ache and multiplying that by one thousand!! And no matter how much pain medication they could give, it would never be able to rid her of this pain. She hasn't had a fever for six day's now, so they are hoping that this fungal infection is gone or under control, they will be able to tell more after her CTscan that they are going to give Shania before the radiation treatment. Also her central line came back negative for infection, so this is more good news. They have taken her off of a couple of anti- biotics. The bone marrow aspirate shows no sign of Neuroblastoma in her bone marrow and we will find out about the bone bi-opsy today. this is significant because if it's not in her bone marrow it's not the cancer that is knocking out her marrow and is the dosage of the chemo that did. Which is huge because they would have been very limited as to how they would be able to treat her cancer i.e. no more chemo. The bone marrow aspirate also showed signs of her bone marrow starting to re-generate. Karen said that her white blood cells are up slightly today but her hemoglobin is down and they will have to give a transfusion for that. but in general we are finally seeing something positive coming about with her health. Dr Ruth came by the other day, she does music therapy with the children here at sick children's hospital and it seemed to give Shania a reprieve from the onslaught of the pain, she had all kinds of instruments that Shania enjoyed playing and boy can Dr Ruth play guitar and sing. Shania missed her on Wednesday because she was getting a scan done and she was disappointed about that, music can be a very relaxing and therapeutic way to control pain and stress. Shannon has been very worried about her big sister, she comes to the hospital every couple of days and has seen what Shania is going through. The one day this week she told Shania that she had said to Ms Long(Shannon's teacher) that she wanted Shania's name on the board instead of hers for "teachers special helper". I remember back to when Shania was in kindergarten and how much it meant to be the special helper for the day, this was a very touching thing that Shannon did for Shania, it just shows the love and bond that they have together.
Sincerely
Shayne,Karen,Shania and Shannon.