It’s been a roller coaster summer for us, but we’re feeling pretty confident going into Fall and School season. Zoe had took a few steps back and scared us a bit after a combination of overconfidence and overexposure to sun led to the Very Rashy Beachtrip.

Still, she recovered fairly quickly from that setback, and has since resumed the drawdown of her meds as we continue to work toward weaning her from the big ones. As of now, she continues to take Tacrolimus (and use a Tacrolimus ointment for spot treatments), Prednisolone (nearly done), Hydrocortisone daily, with Septra on the weekends. At least two of the four cause sun sensitivity, which has made for an interesting balance. And, of course, just as we think we’ve got it perfected, Summer is nearly over.

School is a dilemma for us right now. We very much want to get Zoe started, and she’s on track to begin pre-school in a few weeks. We’re going to play it by ear, and thankfully our pre-school has been incredibly patient and gracious with us, saving a spot for she and Maya when needed, and allowing us to step out when necessary during this past year and a half.

Zoe was diagnosed at 2 months, and as such she’s never really had vaccinations that a typical child would have received several times by her age, a year and half. As such she’s going into school essentially relying on the other families to have vaccinated fully to avoid getting sick. It’s a scary thought, and something we’ve worried about quite a bit, but the alternative is to keep her out for another year.

Instead, what we’re going to do is get her started, and then likely keep her out during the height of flu season until she can get her vaccines. She will almost certainly get sick — Maya did when she started school, I suspect most kids do when thrown into the germ pool for the first time — but Zoe’s immune system seems to be getting sturdier. We have to hope she can weather it.

Just us puppies here

Developmentally, she’s a fireball, and we had nothing to worry about. She’s decided she wants to start potty training almost a year earlier than her sister did. I guess that’s what having a big sister will do, she has so much to watch and emulate. Her vocabulary is growing daily as it should, and she’s stringing words together a little bit now, “nigh nigh daddeh”. She is sitting still for stories more and more, and she wants to be shown how to do things, block stacking, sorting. She’s taken to picking anything she finds on the floor and running to the trash can to throw it away now that she has learned to do that. I’m just waiting for my phone to start ringing from there.

Medically, Zoe’s labs have held up so far. She remains at >98% graft, and her ferritin and WBC counts show no indication of a return of HLH. She just needs to get through the GVH rashes without a serious incident, and we may yet make it through this. We’ve gotten fairly adept now at when and how much she can be outside, so she is able to make it to the pool, on hikes, and on car trips without being overexposed if we toe the line properly. It took a long time to get here though, it seems like.

In the end, we feel really good about where Zoe is. We continue to have our scares, but once we get through them things seem relatively OK. She has survived the transplant, survived at least one cold since then, survived a semi-serious series of GVH rashes, and she is still ok. Now, for the big one: School.