Nathan Monday Update

It's not even tomorrow and yet I already know more. If this is your first read you may want to start with the post below this one. Shelley and I spent over a hour with Dr Ali today and went over Nathan's treatment plan (protocol). The official paperwork came in and as they stated he has Standard Risk precursor B ALL.

There will be at least five phases of treatments and possibly seven depending on how he responds in a couple of them. The first phase that Nathan will go through is the Induction phase. We started part of it today and will do the rest of day 1 tomorrow.

The Induction phase consists of some oral chemo drugs, IV chemo drugs and the spinal chemo drug that he had today. This phase last for 4 weeks and the big days are 8, 15 and 29. Right now he has approximately 95% blasts in his blood (a healthy person has 0). After 8 days we hope that he has less than 5%, but he may not. After 15 days we really hope that he has less than 5% and would then be classed as a rapid early responder. If not, then at 29 days if he has less than 5% then he would be classed as a slow early responder. However, if unfortunately after 29 days he still has more than 5% then we start an additional phase. Nathan may not have to be in the hospital for the full four weeks. Once he becomes stable (good blood counts, no infections, no fever, good appetite, etc) we can come home and continue on an outpatient basis - but no guess on when that might happen.

For you gardeners we can describe it this way. Your bone marrow is a flower garden with lots of different nice flowers. Right now Nathan's flowers are getting choked out by lots and lots of weeds (blasts). His flower garden is overgrown with them! So we are going to spray some Round Up (chemo), and try to kill off the weeds and unfortunately some flowers. The hope is that his gardener (bones) will replant the flowers and then the flowers will be able to compete with the weeds and keep the weeds (once they are under 5%) under control themselves. As we all know, some weeds will be able to hide from the Round Up so we will be using other chemicals as well (other chemo drugs). Darn weeds.

time for supper thanks to the Bergs, take care everyone,
-Arron