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 30, 2003

Tuesday, September 30, 2003 8:19 AM CDT

Susan here..

Nathan's day yesterday was OK. His pain is mostly under control. He is sleeping alot. He still has a fever around 103 that comes down a little with tylenol. The doctors think it might be a yeast infection in his mouth. All in all none of this is really unexpected and he really is doing pretty well.

One of the blood tests that they perform 3 times a week showed a higher level of immature red blood cells than they expected. It could just be a "blip" or it could be that his counts are already starting to come up. They will repeat the test on Thursday.

Luke here now. It is Noon. Susan is getting some time away and a volunteer is playing with Nathan while I grab some food and do this. The key word in that last sentence was "play". Nathan really is having a better day. The pain seems better and he has been awake since about 8:15am. He has played and watched tv and was really good for the docs. His primary oncologist from the Springs was up to round this morning and it really cheered Nathan up to see him. He is definitely doing better and we hope that is a trend. His white counts were up slightly today, although he needed platelets and red blood this morning. His platelets were a little low last night and we were thinking he should have been transfused in the evening. We came in this morning to find blood stains on the floor in Nathan's room from nose bleeds. The docs won't say they think his white counts are on a "trend", but we sure hope so. The sooner those come up the sooner he feels better and his pain will subside.

Gotta go. This is the first time I've left Nathan with a volunteer (I've left him with his nurses). I think it is probably going well as he was excited to show Mike his construction toys.

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