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.

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

Wednesday, September 24, 2003 2:34 PM CDT

Susan here..

Nathan is doing pretty well today. He hasn't eaten or drunk anything today and has thrown up once. We pretty much figured he'd stop eating at some point and he isn't upset about it. His counts are down again but not too low yet. He got a blood transfusion yesterday. They transfuse at a relatively high level here (hemoglobin of 10 for those who know) and he was rarely even at 10 during treatment. Last night when he was in the bath Luke and I just kept staring at him because for the first time in 6 or more months he was actually pink! The nurses kept wondering if he was feverish. He looks pretty good non-anemic but we are not used to it. Today his hemoglobin was 13 and he is still very pink!

He has still had no fevers and is doing very well. His stools are starting to get painful and he is about to pop some mouth sores we think. The next day or two he will start feeling bad.

Yesterday I felt pretty crummy and came home early. Today it is Luke's turn to feel crappy but at least we are alternating days.

We haven't seen Julia yet. She has had a cold and so we are planning on my mom bringing her up on Friday. It is hard being away from her for so long. This weekend my mom will leave and my friend Lisa is coming with her daughters to stay and take care of Julia.

So - tomorrow is the big day. It should be very anti-climactic since it is just like a blood transfusion. We will be happy for the stem cell infusion because it is another step to trying to cure Nathan. I actually had a dream where I had the bag of stem cells and dropped it. But anyway - it will be the next week or so that will be the risky time for Nathan and keeping him infection free.

We will update tomorrow and will have some pictures too.

p.s. for any of you in the area...we'd love to see you (if you are healthy!) it would be a great diversion. If you email with the link on this page we will give you our phone number.

 

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