Day 14 Update

Nathan had another night of being up lots and this time little brother Justin really got in the act. Shelley and I were both in bed before 9 and we had a great sleep til just after 12 when Justin decided he wanted in on the partying! Finally got him down just before 1 and then Nathan had his typical 2 am PB&J sandwich. We had another good sleep from 4am to 7am so we felt really well rested today.

We needed that rest for the long afternoon at the hospital. First Nathan had blood drawn at the Cancer Center. His platelets were still OK at about 40 but his white blood cells are WAY down at .39. We have to be really careful about any fevers or infections as he has nothing to fight it off right now. His red blood cell count was also critically low and he will get a transfusion tomorrow after the bone marrow biopsy and aspiration and he also gets his Vinchristine. As a reminder, you cannot transfuse white blood cells which is why they don't. Another positive is that Nathan does not get a lumbar puncture tomorrow, that doesn't occur again until Day 29.

We also got to wait and wait and wait to see Dr Dzus. We got registered shortly after 2pm and saw the doctor at 4pm and, horror of horrors, we had forgot to bring Nathan's DS (handheld video game). That was a looong wait - at least at the Cancer Center there is a playroom but in orthopedics it is simply a waiting room.

They took X-rays again and they showed that Nathan now has osteopenia - a lowering of his bone density. That is generally caused by the chemotherapy and should be nothing to worry about and his bones should return to normal after the chemotherapy. Nothing else really showed up on any of the x-rays and his range of motion is very good. Dr Dzus simply thinks that since it was the first place to show at the beginning of the leukemia that it will be the last to return to normal. So the short version is that we should not have anything additional to worry about and, as with everything else, it is just going to take some time to heal. If there are no improvements in the next couple of weeks then we would be into the bone scans, MRIs and/or CATscans but they are not concerned enough at this point to warrant any of that.

Now the really really HARD part will be that Nathan is not allowed to eat after midnight tonight until his biopsy tomorrow. The plus side is that since we don't need platelets we should be faster at getting to the biopsy but his hunger is way greater than it was last week. I hope there are no delays tomorrow! Again, please hope and pray with us that his blast count will be less than 5%.

Our positive note for the day was that Nathan had the option of leaving the needle in his port today since he needs it tomorrow anyway. Nathan said, "no, take it out. I'll get a new one tomorrow - I'm a tough guy." That he is, that he is....