Welcome to Nathan's Cancer Journey

This blog is a reposting of Nathan's Caringbridge page which we updated throughout his battle with Neuroblastoma.

Nathan was born on June 16, 2000, diagnosed with Stage IV Neuroblastoma on April 1, 2003 and died on July 29, 2007.

I have posted the journal here to make it easier to look up by date and also to be able to easily add pictures to the journal entries.

Some of the pictures go along with the text, but many of the pictures you will see were pictures taken on the same date the journal was added, even if the pictures have nothing to do with the text. In the future I may add additional journal entries to go along with pictures to add more explanation/memories.

I am just getting started posting the years of entries and so this will be incomplete for some time. I hope to eventually also post the guestbook entries by date as a comment on the post.

4/17/03 2

Thursday, April 17, 2003 9:34 PM CDT

 

Luke writing again. Second entry of the day, so if you missed the first one you may want to check the archive.

 

I'm writing in because Susan can't. She is on the way to the hospital with Nathan. He is neutropenic (depressed and virtually non-existant immune system) and his temp had been hanging around 99 or 100 for a couple of days but it jumped above the magic number tonight. Any temp 101.5 or above while he is neutropenic will land him in the hospital for probably 3 days. They will want to watch him closely and get a 3 day blood culture so they can make sure he doesn't have a bacterial infection running wild. I'm not sure if he will go straight on antibiotics. He has been taking some orally this week. We feel really bad for the little guy, but he wasn't upset about going. As Susan carried him to the car I heard him say, "Do I get to drive in the dark?". Susan called from the road and said he was happy and telling her all about all of the things that happen at the hospital.

 

Mom and Dad, I know you will feel guilty and bad about leaving today and then this happening. Don't. We were holding out hope this wouldn't land him in the hospital and we have plenty of help with Julia already lined up. The support from friends and neighbors here has been outstanding and everything will be fine. Susan and I will be alternating nights this week.

 

Ugh.

 

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