Friday, May 23, 2003

Friday, May 23, 2003 9:47 AM CDT

Luke here...Yesterday I had chemo day duty, so here is the update. So far, so good. We are very surprised by how well Nathan is handling chemo in general and this round in particular. Wednesday was fine. Susan had him at the clinic. It was a long day for both of them, but he wasn't feeling too bad at home other than being exhausted. Thursday started with a failed attempt at breakfast, so we thought the nastiness was setting in. To our surprise, so far it really hasn't. We had a pretty good day at the clinic. It was slow in the morning so he got lots of attention from the nurses and doctors coming in to chat with him. We played and talked without any television until noon, then watched movies until almost 2:00 and then we both napped until a little after 3:00 when the chemo was done and they did some anti-naseua medications and we were out of there by around 3:45. He snacked and drank a little and held it down. At home he watched tv, played, and ate dinner. He kept dinner down and woke up literally giggling in his bed this morning. We are amazed. He didn't have much appetite this morning, but he ate 1/4 pop tart and has felt fine.

Today is the last day of treatment in this cycle. Susan took him in. It will be a long day. His hemoglobin is on its way down and with nowhere to go but farther down and a three day weekend coming up, they are going to do a red blood cell transfusion after chemo today to try and keep him up through the weekend. We had thought we would have to go to the hospital for transfusion tomorrow, but they are going to do it this afternoon. Susan and Nate will be pretty beat up from a long day today, but hopefully he continues to feel well. If he continues to hold down his food, we may even be able to keep his weight and nutrition up and not have to go on supplement. That would be great. I'm not going to get my hopes up yet. On that front, I had a long talk with the nurse practitioner at the clinic yesterday. They are amazed at his nutrition. Most kids apparently are technically malnourished throughout treatment. Nathan's protein (and some other indicator) tanked when he didn't eat during cycle 1, but they are up in low normal ranges now. They think that is just great.

No news on the bone barrow biopsy yet. Hopefully Susan will get results today. I'm hoping for any kind of improvement. We got tood news on the tumor mass this week and too much good news is too much to ask for. If we see some improvement this time we can hope for big improvement in about three weeks form now once this new set of drugs has had its chance to fight the cancer.

There I go again rambling along. I should post in the evenings when I'm too exhausted to ramble on like this.

Thanks for your continued support. Keep your fingers crossed for us that he continues to handle this treatment so well.