October 2010

Well at the end of September, Brynn ended up getting a fever again.  She was so worried she would be sick for her birthday!  She said all she wanted for her birthday was to go to school!  I thought that was probably not going to happen!  On October 4th the day before her birthday, her best friend Kaylee got to spend the whole day with her.  We went down to the river and had a great day.  We got her blood work done and waited to hear the results.  That afternoon our nurse Jo called and said "Guess what?  Her counts are so good she can go to school tomorrow and lick a doorknob if she wants to!"  We had a good laugh about it.  That night Kaylee's mom sewed a dress for Brynn to wear to school for her birthday!  My sister who is the secretary at the school planned a fundraiser called "Trim for Brynn" for her birthday and we didn't know if she would get to it- but now she could!  The last period of school the whole school was busy decorating the whole gym for it.  They had 10 hairdressers set up in their stations to cut hair, 2 men shaving heads, and 3 of Brynn's dad's friends raised money by getting their legs waxed!  When we arrived Brynn was wearing a hat because she had recently shaved her own head.  As soon as we got their her big sister Sadie ran up to us and said "I'm shaving my head!" I didn't believe her and actually questioned her doing it because I didn't want to hear that she regretted it later!  She ran over and was the first girl to sit in the chair.  They took the first buzz right through the middle of her shoulder length hair!  Both her and I had tears streaming down our faces!  I couldn't believe my 13 yr old daughter that was so into her looks and hair was willing to do that for her sister!  The whole night was unbelievable.  They had supper people could buy, they had tables and tables of things being auctioned off by an auctioneer, they had 500 cupcakes made for her birthday, and it was packed!  Many people said they had never felt such community spirit before.  At the end of the night 55 people had shaved their head for Brynn and the school only has 150 kids in it!  My sister had a goal of raising $5000 and a teacher Mrs. Forbes said if they raised $10,000 she would shave her head!  They ended up raising $22,000!!!!!!  We were completely overwhelmed as we thanked everyone there.  The next day Sadie"s crosscountry team competed and half their team was bald!  It was so awesome to see Brynn take her hat off and be completely comfortable because everyone else was bald!

Later in the month Brynn got another fever and had the worse mouth sores she had ever had.  I felt so helpless as she couldn't even swallow a milkshake without being in tears.  Thankfully it only lasted about 5 days and then she felt better.  The next big step was taking her stem cells.  It is crazy what they can do at Children's Hospital.  They give her these GCSF shots and get her counts as high as they can.  They scheduled her stem cell harvest for Thursday and when they checked Wednesday her counts were really high.  They said its too bad we aren't doing them today!  But the next day they were even better!  A team came from Foothills and hooked her up to this huge machine.  It takes her blood out of a port they put in her leg and spins it and separates it and stores this special baby stem cell.  Dr. Lewis asked for 900 million which he said was a crazy number but they would see what they could do.  They said it takes about 8 hours and she has to lie very still.  Some kids are on it for allot longer and they don't get the number the Dr hopes for.  Well, after 3 hours they checked what they had and they had more than the Dr asked for already!  They were cheering and high five-ing each other!!!! So Brynn has 4 bags of her stem cells that she can get back when she needs them which is awesome!