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.

Saturday, December 6, 2003

Saturday, December 6, 2003 4:37 PM CST

Susan here..

We moved into the apartment Friday afternoon. We woke him up early to give him breakfast and then spent the morning packing and cleaning. I took Nathan to the clinic and Luke and my aunt and uncle moved our things. We were trying to hurry and get moved before the snow hit. Nathan went into the playroom and played most of the time we waited for his scan. They sedated him upstairs and then rolled him downstairs were he waited for a while. They transferred him to the scan table and then the nurse was trying to take off his mask and he woke up. He had a fit for a long time and finally went back to sleep after another dose of medication.

After the scan he was pretty woozy but wanted to eat out and so we went to a mexican restaurant and had a nice dinner. He very much enjoyed being outside in the snow. This kind of medication also increases the appetite so he ate a ton for dinner and when we got to the apartment he kept eating and eating for another few hours and then got exhausted and went to bed.

This morning he woke up quite happy and enjoyed looking out the window at the snowplows and the tram that goes to roosevelt island that we can see out our window.

We walked to Bloomingdales and to Borders and then had to come home quickly after Nathan had a very big diaper disaster. We were at Borders to buy him a CD with Jingle Bells on it since it is his favorite Christmas song.

Nathan had a good nap this afternoon and I took the subway to Kmart and bought a few things. We will go back soon to buy a Christmas tree and ornaments there.

We are all settled in at the apartment and very happy we made the move. We won't rent an apartment for future visits but to be here at Christmas it will be so nice.

Nathan doesn't go back to the clinic until Tuesday. We found out he will be bone marrow aspirations after the first 3 rounds of the antibody treatment which means he will have to be here until at least the 29th. After that we would come out every 4 to 5 weeks for a little more than two weeks for up to 2 years. The up to 2 years part is only if he doesn't develop an immune response to the antibody and if his cancer doesn't advance.

I hope you all are enjoying your weekend. We are relishing ours!







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