Karina Jean

Dear family & friends,

Yesterday, April 26th, 2010, our sweet Karina went home to be with Jesus. Our brave girl fought hard until the end, and now she truly is healed. She will be greatly missed; the best daughter, sister, and friend. A celebration of her life will be held Saturday, May 8th, at Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church (Gig Harbor) at 3pm. Everyone is welcome!

Thank you so much for all your prayers, love, & support.

Love,
the Robertson Family

Hospital Continued, April 9

Hello All,

It's Annika here, writing for Karina.

It's been a while since the last update, so here's what's happened since March 24th:

Saturday after Karina was admitted at TG, she had another chest X-Ray taken which revealed bacterial pneumonia in her left lung. She is on several antibiotics to stop it from progressing, and now we are waiting for her white blood cells and other counts to bounce back so she can fight this on her own. As of this morning, her white count is .03...she has a long way to go. She's been on and off of oxygen for the last two weeks, right now she is on. She really wants to come home, so please pray for a speedy recovery! In the last two days her low potassium level has become an issue. We switched to a different room on a new floor so her heart can be monitored while she receives large doses of potassium. It was scary at first, but so far it's going smoothly. She is still having fevers, and needs to start eating more. Her appetite is definitely coming back (tonight we're having terriyaki, yum!), just pray she can keep it down! She is feeling a little better now than when we first got here.

So things to pray for are...

• blood counts to go up
• fevers to stop
• potassium levels to go up
• appetite
• go home, pronto!

Thank you all so much for you prayers, love, & support.

Love,

Annika & Karina♥

Feverish

Hey There everyone.

Well I got a fever last night around 102-103F and the standard is to go straight to the hospital which we did. So here I am in TG again. They are waiting for blood culture results to come back to see if I have some sort of infection. If there's no infection then this is just my bodies way to reacting to being neutropenic(low on white cells and everything else). So I'm just resting here get antibiotics and fluids and hopefully can get out when I've been feverless for 24hrs.

Things to Pray For:

• Fevers go away
• Smooth recovery
• No infections
• Counts go up

Well I'm gonna hang out with Karl and watch American Idol.

Thanks for your prayers and love.

Love,

Karina

Phase 1 Complete

Well I am officially done with chemo as of yesterday! The tumor is gone and there is no cancer in my bone marrow or blood! Thank you God!

We came home yesterday afternoon. It was a little rough last night just getting neasua under control, but this morning I'm feeling better. I hope and pray we can continue to keep the neasua under control and that I don't get any fevers. Fevers land me back in the hospital and I never want to go back. So the next few weeks will be spent recovering and waiting for my counts to come up. The next step will to be to do the lymphocytic infusion.

It is SO good to be home, I was counting the days!

Things to Pray For:

• neasua kept under control
• counts come up
• patience-waiting for the counts to come up
• no fevers-this is a big one
• continue to gain weight and strength

Thank you for your prayers and support!

Love,

Karina

Round 2

Greetings from TG!

I am currently sitting in my room snacking on chicken McNuggets, the lunch of Olympians ha. Chemo doesn't start until around 2pm so I'm eating a lot before I feel sick. I'm not really excited to be here but I am hopeful that Thursday will come quickly and then I can finally be done with this place FOREVER. (That's if I don't get any fevers.) The being done FOREVER part I am really happy about!

This morning I got a bone marrow aspiration to see how it's doing. They have to run tests on the sample they took, but Dr. Thomas looked at it and didn't see any cancer and the bone marrow is working hard to make platelets, red cells, white cells etc. So that's good news! I am about to get a I.V. inserted for a CT scan later today so I better go.

Keep praying for smooth chemo and no fevers and good recovery!

I'll keep you all posted, thanks for the prayers!

Love,

Karina

Postponed Again

Well hello again...bet you didn't think you'd hear from me so soon haha.

So today we went to the doctor and my bloodwork showed that my white blood count has gone up a lot, which is great! My platelets are also coming up, but I still needed a little boost. So I had a platelet transfusion. Then after that I had a blood transfusion too because my red blood was a little on the low side. It's a little low because my bone marrow is working so hard to produce other cells it can't do everything at once. Because of all these factors Chemo is now rescheduled for Monday the 8th. So another week to hang out!

That's all for now, the prayer requests remain the same as below.

Thanks for your prayers and support.

Love,

Karina

Lately

Well I've gotten behind on my updates, so sorry...

Anyway...I saw the doctor on Thursday and had to get more platelets from my dad. The good news is that my white count is up enough that I can finally enter civilization again! Although very carefully. Because my platelets are still low and I'm still weak chemo has been postponed again until Thursday March 4. I secretly glad because that means more time at home hehe.

Otherwise I'm still trying to eat more, which is a struggle ugh. But I take it one day and one meal at a time. I'm feeling pretty good except for a tight back from stress. All in all though, I'd say I'm doing well.

With my newfound freedom this weekend I plan to go see a movie with Karl(a real date yay!:) ). I also got to get a massage for my pesky back at Healthy Reflections in Uptown(if you ever need one, go there!). I'm happy to get out a little, it's great!

Things to Pray For:

• Counts continue to go up, especially the platelets.
• Appetite to increase
• The hurting back
• Chemo to go well next week
• Good recovery after chemo

Well thanks for checking in, sorry my posts are getting behind, I still getting the hang of blogging:)

Thanks as always for your continued love, support, and prayers!

Love,

Karina