Allison had a great birthday all things considered. Her pain was controlled, she felt decent, she got around 80 emailed cards from all over the world! I decorated her room and her dad, grandma, step mom and sister brought her some cake. The staff made her a birthday poster and she said she was happy to be in the hospital with pain meds instead of at home in pain, which was a great attitude to have! 

Today things went downhill quickly. Her leg continued swelling significantly and the redness from the infection started to spread up her leg around noon or so. By 10pm it had spread almost all the way up to her knee. The dr ordered an “urgent” MRI which took about 7 hours to get. Once they got the results, they immediately told her no eating or drinking and the doctors came and said there is an infection, not just on the skin, but of the deeper tissue and possibly the end of the bone. I don’t even want to write what they said because it seems like it might still be speculation and I don’t want to make it real by writing it if it’s not what they suspect. Ortho is super laid back as usual, which is slightly disconcerting, but said that they will most likely do surgery either tonight or tomorrow if this gets any worse and will check back in 1-2 hours to see if it's spread anymore and decide how aggressive we need to be. Surgery would remove any tissue that is impacted, and clean the surrounding tissue before closing. They said it's called an exploratory fasciotomy. They also said they don’t usually remove bone that gets infected but there’s no way to know till they go in. 

We URGENTLY need all the prayers that this is not the bacteria they said, that the antibiotics start working and this infection recedes and disappears without any surgical intervention!!! Also pray that her ANC recovers and her immune system starts fighting this infection!