Fall Festival Scare

Today was Jackson and Kate's elementary school's Fall Festival. It is definitley one of the highlights of the year for all of my kids! Probably because we start preparing for the event in the summer time and they hear me talking about and planning for it for months. Kate has been at home with me as well, so she's gotten an extra dose of running errands, doing tasks like bagging prizes, and meetings with sub-committee chairs.

Unfortunately, Kate didn't get to really enjoy the festival this year though. After just an hour, Kate began complaining to Jason and Gramma H. about her stomach hurting and then asked if they could take her home. When they found me and told me that, I noticed that she had petechiae all her face, neck and torso. (Petechia are small red/purple spots that are tiny vessel hemorrhages. These show up when platlets are very low.) After a while Kate was doubled over and started to worry us. I was having visions of driving her to the ER for evaluation and then I began worrying about what could be causing this pain. Jason, Gramma, Kate and Ava left the festival and I got on the phone with the on-call Heme/Onc doctor to look for some guidance as to what we should do. Because she didn't have a fever, a rigid abdomen, vomiting or bleeding from another site, they recommended giving her some narcotic pain medicine and checking back with them. Gratefully, she took a 3+ hour nap and woke up feeling much better.

This picture is the only picture I took that included Kate before she started hurting. They were all participating in a cake walk in and Jackson won the cake! I felt so bad for Kate that she wasn't able to really enjoy the Fall Festival that she had so been looking forward to. Gramma later told me that Kate was really missing me as well too, so she and I hung out last night and caught up after a busy 2 days. She is doing fine now and hopefully will be on an upward swing. When we later talked to Dr. Keller he suspected that her abdominal pain and general crappy feeling was basically because she was in the roughest part of her chemotherapy treatment.

The Chick-fil-A marketing manager had a special surprise for Kate. She gave her a HUGE cow and Chick-Fil-A meals for a year! Kate has been carrying (or dragging) the cow around with her constantly since yesterday. In fact, she is currently napping with him.

I really wanted a cute shot of our 3 little pumpkins but Ava wasn't having it and Kate didn't like the scratchy straw. So, this is our one and only shot. We hope that next year's Fall Festival finds Kate a much happier, healthier little girl!