Settling In...

This past Friday, Anna had another round of chemo delivered via her spine. The procedure went well and no major issues to report.
 
Anna's aunt Teresa came up from the Dominican Republic this past Saturday. She's going to be staying with us for the foreseeable future. This was her first time in the States (and first time out of her country, first time on a plane, etc). Many of the things that we take for granted are completely new to her. She's been great around the house with cleaning, cooking, helping out with TJ and pretty much everything else imaginable. TJ's reasonably adaptive to whoever is around, so while he still wants Mom/Dad to do everything, he's getting along with her pretty well. TJ and I took her out shopping on Sunday. Just that little bit of time really helped my Spanish skills quite a bit. Although, I'm constantly around it, I really haven't put in any effort to speak it... so I understand quite a bit, but my speaking skills are pretty weak. Hopefully, as a result of her being here my Spanish and TJ's Spanish will get better, and along the way, I'm sure Teresa will pick up some English skills.
 
I went with Anna to her chemo appointment today. On the way in, we saw two of her nurses from the old 5300 unit and they were real happy to see her. I knew they cared about her back when she was in the 5300 unit, and now over at the Cancer Center, but that seems to have also spread to the Same Day Surgery unit where they administer this procedure. She really is like a rock star in this hospital. When we were in the room, at least four different nurses stopped by just to say hello, see how she was doing, and let Anna know that they were praying for her/thinking about her. It's really amazing to see. Today's procedure went pretty well. Afterwards, she's tired, achy and the nausea is back again. The nausea normally passes in a few hours, so we're hoping for the best. Hopefully, in a few hours, we'll all get some sleep.
 
Anna's vision was back to normal for the first time today. Woo hoo! I think she'll be in bed for another day, but probably by Wednesday (assuming everything stays as is), she'll be back behind the wheel again. She can't drive herself to these procedures, but hopefully it'll be good enough to run to the supermarket or run some errands. She was starting to get a little nervous that this may have been permanent, so we're happy it's back to normal.
 
We had been waiting on approval from the insurance company to proceed with Anna's blood work related to finding a match for the bone marrow/stem cell procedure. We just heard that the approval came through late today, so later this week they'll be able to run that blood work. Every day, we take another step forward.