Day 8 Update

Day 8 is here.... and no we don't know anything yet - just thought I'd start with that.

We had a very long day today at the Cancer center. We arrived shortly after 8 am and they got him in, interfaced with his port and drew some blood right off the bat. Then it was out to the waiting room / play room to wait for the blood test results. After about an hour they came back indicating that Nathan was critically low in both platelet and red blood cell count. That meant that his procedure had to wait until he had a platelet transfusion and that involved more waiting. As the Anaesthesiologist stated better to wait and have a hungry grumpy kid than to go ahead and risk a spinal hemotoma. Finally the platelets arrived and they started them up. Time to go! But not so fast, now we had to wait for the anaesthesiologist to come back. Anaesthesiology was booked for earlier in the morning when we were still waiting so they left and we had to wait for them to free up and come back. They were finally available shortly before noon. Wow! Keep in mind that all of that waiting was happening to a little boy who is on steroids and now has a huge appetite but was not allowed to eat anything at all! We had a few "moments" trying to explain why we were keeping food away from him and he wasn't buying it.

Anyway, after the anaesthesiologist was ready Nathan was taken into the procedure room and given a general anaesthetic to put him to sleep. He went to sleep really easily and the procedure only lasted 15 minutes after all that waiting! I keep mentioning the "procedure" and I know some people want to know what it was. The first thing they did was a lumbar puncture through which they gave Methotrexate which is to prevent the leukemia from crossing into the spinal fluid. Next they did a bone marrow aspiration and following that they did a bone marrow biopsy. The aspiration and biopsy are what will tell us whether or not the treatments are working. We will not get the results of the tests until the end of the week at the earliest but those are the tests where we are hoping for less than 5% blasts in the marrow.

Nathan woke up from anaesthesia really quickly this time and woke up hungry as a bear! We had packed a wrap, a juice box and some granola bars. Those went pretty fast as well as a bag of chips the nurses provided. Then Shelley had to make a McDonalds run and Nathan ate all of his fries, his burger and drank all of his milk as well.

While we were eating the nurses kept coming to give him different products through his port IV. First he had a saline solution, then he received his Vincristine (another chemo drug) and then he got a transfusion of red blood cells. All that took another few hours, Nathan even had a nap during his transfusion. By then it was almost 4pm and finally time to go home.

Our good news for the day was that Nathan's lymph nodes, liver and spleen were all back to normal sizes (they were all enlarged and is a common symptom) and so the chemo was working. Also his blood work showed that all of his cell counts were reduced which is a good sign as well. Our concerning news is that with all that cell reduction Nathan should now be able to walk but still cannot. The pain should have been from too many cells in his bone marrow but now that the majority have been killed off the pain should have subsided. If he still has leg pain by our day 15 visit then we will be off to see another specialist. Here's hoping he can walk by then.

Our next hospital visit is on Thursday for blood work and possible platelet transfusion if his counts are still critically low. As I said, they won't have the results of the bone marrow tests by then but hopefully it will be Friday.

Please continue to pray for us.
-Arron