Here we are after a busy weekend. I will get to that in a moment.
I have to share the medical news first. I have been extremely stressed about Nathan's status. We did get some good news today that Nathan's urine levels are normal as is his LDH. His urine levels were elevated at relapse so it is good to see them back to normal. We didn't have his LDH at relapse but it can be an indicator of cancer activity in the body. His Sed rate and CRP are both high. Once again - these are the tests for inflammation in the body. They can be high for all kinds of reasons. For example they were high when he was diagnosed and they were also high when he had the fluid on his hip. So - between the recent surgery, leg pain, and recent viral respiratory illness who knows what that represents. We will redo it next week. The bone scan will really be the next indicator of what may be going on. I was putting lotion on his legs last night and rubbing it on the "spot" on his thigh hurt him. His oncologist said it really seems like a soft tissue problem (muscle or fat). So - we'll see what the bone scan says and go on from there.
His counts are actually lower. His doctor thinks that his platelets rising last week may have been an inaccurate test. They are at 23,000 (transfuse at 20,000) but are likely on their way up (they can tell that his platelets are bigger cells which mean newer...something like that - from some graph the machine prints). His hemoglobin was down but at 8.2 still not at transfusion level and will hopefully remain high enough not to transfuse. His ANC was 1200. Anything below 1000 is neutropenic but it is really below 500 where he should be kept out of public places so 1200 is just fine. This is without having any neupogen - which is the drug he usually gets to bring his white counts up - so that is fine.
We will recheck counts on Thursday and try to figure out where we will go from there. If they are still low, we will see about chemo next week. If he takes to long to recover they will lower his dose of chemo back to where it was the first round. We are kind of assuming at this point that he will have another round of chemo. His oncologist will email the NY oncologist to see what the status is on the vaccine trial and get his input on more chemo. I asked him if there were no trial what he would recommend for Nathan and he thought 4 rounds of this chemo (total) so two more rounds. Since we haven't heard anything from NY I think it is very likely he will start chemo next week again so long as his counts are high enough. I hope we at least get a little bit of info from NY.
We didn't get Nathan's weight today, but I think he is holding steady. I will make sure to get it on Thursday. I think that covers all things medical for today....
Back to our weekend...Friday night Luke and I went to the choir banquet and the kids were very happy to be babysat. They just love babysitters and especially love the sitter they had - Brenna. They love to play with her. Unfortunately I had bad indigestion all night which made it a little hard to enjoy it all. It is just one of those pregnancy things that crop up every once in a while and I wish it could have happened a different night.
Saturday we took it easy during the day with me running a few errands by myself and then a family trip to the "cookie coffee shop" AKA Panera for an afternoon snack. That is one of the kids' favorite outings. Saturday night we went to the zoo. It was a very fun evening. They had trams taking everyone around the zoo so we didn't have to tackle any of those hills! The kids decorated crowns, ate corn dogs and popcorn, rode the carousel, checked out a racecar, fed the giraffes, rode the little train, got a very close up view of a lion, watched an elephant paint, won a canvas of the elephants trunk print we saw it make, and got all kinds of cool little gifts and things to bring home. It was neat being at the zoo in the evening and especially when it got dark. We only did about half of the things available to do - but we had to leave at a reasonable time to get everyone to bed. It was a wonderful event and will be annual from now on.
Sunday brought church, housework and some rest too.
Luke is off playing pick-up basketball after several Mondays in a row without being able to make it.
Tomorrow I have a doctors appointment while the kids are in school and Wednesday Nathan has field day at school and I will drop Julia off at Tammy's so I can be with him and help him to do activities and keep him from doing things he should not be with low blood counts. So - I will probably write again on Thursday after his clinic visit.
Thanks for checking in!
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