Well, after an excruciating series of attempts to do a blood test on imoto--she was screaming for 25 minutes straight in the doctor's office yesterday, as I gathered from tsuma's horrified emails--it turns out her white blood cell count has gone up since the last test. More precisely, her neutrophil count went from 15% to 30% between Saturday and Wednesday--still low, but not a huge cause for alarm. As my uncle explained, neutrophil levels go in cycles and some illnesses cause them to drop. Which is a lot more encouraging than the Japanese doctors, who said imoto is likely to get sick more often than other kids in the coming years. Just in time for the summer disease wave in Japan! There's a measles outbreak across the entire country, the norovirus is still going strong, the adenovirus is breaking out, and who knows what else. Plus imoto has missed a vaccination or two because she was sick at the time.... Anyone out there with experience with toddlers with low neutrophil counts, feel free to chime in!
So our last two months and change on the Fulbright should be interesting, to say the least. Thanks, imoto! I suppose a one-year-old doesn't have too many gift options for her parents' anniversary, so I shouldn't complain. Plus, she's on my good side because she was so cool during the two four-hour excursions we did on our own this week since her fever broke. Just come up with something better next anniversary!
[Update: Imoto just did "dozo-domo" for the first time this morning (giving something to you and then taking it back from you--she had the taking part down a long time ago, of course). So what if it was a day late--it's still our anniversary in the States, so I'm counting it as this year's gift!]
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