Happy Birthday!

 Celia remained in good spirits last week so in anticipation of her being OK on Sunday (her 5th birthday) we did a bit of baking and made a loose arrangement with 3 kinder friends to go to a showing of the Little Mermaid.
When Sunday came around she had a bit of a cold but the excitement of the day kept her spirits up so we went to the cinema on a beautiful sunny 24 degree day where we met Bettie, her best friend; Dylan, her boyfriend(!)   and Ella, another kinder friend. Max came too and was totally enthralled as it was his first cinema trip.
 Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Andy and Mabel laid out a birthday lunch complete with chocolate birthday cake which was another first (Andy's first cake) and it was a lot more successful than my feeble attempt two years ago for his 40th.
By 2pm birthday celebrations were over which was a relief as we'd been to a party the night before and a 10am screening with a bunch of pre-schoolers is not the ideal way to sooth a sore head!
Tuesday's blood tests showed that Celia's neutrophils (infection-fighting white blood cells) had recovered so Wednesday's visit to the cancer centre went ahead. She was first on the lumbar puncture list so we were there for 8am and didn't leave til 5.45pm as she had to get 3 different chemo drugs and be on a hydration drip the whole day. I asked why the drugs couldn't be administered while she was under the general anaesthetic and the reason is a safety precaution (to prevent any chance of a drug mix up) so Celia had to withstand a new traumatic method of administration which involved the chemo being injected into her thigh. This wasn't actually painful as they inserted a 'butterfly' tube under the anaesthetic, but when she caught sight of the huge needle she got hysterical again. The play therapist tried for about half an hour to calm her but I think that just gets her more worked up so the next day when the nurse came to our house for the thigh injection I told her to do it quickly while I held her. As you can see Max was witness to all this drama but once he had quizzed the nurse about what she was doing he seemed OK with the situation! She got the thigh injection on 4 consecutive days and if her blood counts are high on Tuesday this will be repeated next week. Happy Birthday Celia!