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.

Tuesday, September 23, 2003

Tuesday, September 23, 2003 3:52 PM CDT

Luke here...Not too much to report. Things are still going well. Nathan finished his chemo yesterday morning. He has had a fair amount of vomitting today, so we are pushing the "tummy medicine" again. He is, as always, handling it well. Now we are just waiting for the chemo to both do its work and get out of his system. We have to wait for the chemo to be gone before giving him his stem cells back so that the cells aren't attacked by chemo. Day 0, when he gets his cells, is Thursday. The doctors are pleased. His counts have stayed pretty good for a good stretch of this and he hasn't had any fevers or major adverse reactions to the high doses of chemo. His counts are still pretty good, but they took a big dive between yesterday and today and they will continue to fall like that. Between the nasaue and falling counts he is obviously not feeling as well, but he is still handing in there. Some of the daily routines and meds are still a little bit of a struggle, but that is to be expected. The great thing (or at least one of them) is that when he throws a fit about something, it is all verbal and while throwing the fit does what he is supposed to do. For example, when he gets his "line care" where they change the bandage and clean the site where his line leaves his chest, he may scream, but he always holds still like he is supposed to.

Susan and I are doing pretty well too. Nathan continues to be fine with us leaving at the end of the day and we usually get to leave at around 8pm. It is good to have a nice apartment to come "home" to.

That is all for now. Hopefully things don't get too interesting in the days to come.

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