Yup, you read that right - and holding. In another case of expecting the unexpected, Nathan's counts were not high enough to proceed with treatment today. After not having had treatment for two weeks, and having really high counts last Monday, we did not expect his counts to be too low today but there they were. Nathan's WBC was at 2.00 with Neutrophils of 0.53 which is below the .75 required to continue. His Hemoglobin was OK at 98 and his Platelets were still fairly high at 380 (they only needed to be 75) but those darn Neutrophils stopped us again.
Now, not having treatment you would think we had a nice short day - NOT AT ALL! We arrived at the Cancer Center shortly after 8am and were the second family there. Nathan got into the room fairly quickly but they were unable to draw his blood. They tried both sides of his dual port but neither would let blood full. Nathan seemed to get a little upset about that and got immediately uncooperative, telling nurse Andrea that he wasn't going to give her blood today. They tried all the usual tricks, of arms up, arms down, look this way, look that way, etc but it was dry as a bone. That meant he had to get a drug called Cath-flow, which is kind of like Draino for his port. The steroids caused a protein flap at the end of his line and it just doesn't allow the blood through and yes we had been through that before. So after he gets his Cath-flow then we have to wait 20 minutes before they can try again... back to the playroom. The good news\bad news was that Nathan's LP wasn't scheduled to be until 1:05pm. That was good news as this slow down with the blood test wouldn't interfere with trying to get to the LP but the bad news is that it meant that Nathan couldn't eat until 2pm.
The playroom started filling up fast today - Nathan's buddy Michael showed up and they immediately started playing their DSs. Adam, Tyrell, and Maria all showed up and then a new family came in. You sure get to know these people after being forced to spend the day together. For instance, the new family just moved from Morden, Manitoba to Humboldt three weeks ago and their son also had ALL. He is now in remission and in maintenance and they are now coming to the Saskatoon Cancer Center for their checkups. Anyway, it got quite bustling and loud when yet another little girl came and then Esther showed up to play with them all.
After more than 20 minutes, they came to get us so Nathan could get checked out by the resident. He was making her work hard for the results but she did quite well with Nathan. After that it was time to give blood again but this time it worked - yay! Back to the playroom to wait for the results.
Some time after 11am Dr Ali came to get us and it is funny as he doesn't remember our names so we are just Dad and Mom. Shelley and I both find it disconcerting when he does this as he asks us to follow him and we go to a private room. He is very sombre in telling us that Nathan's counts are not high enough and that used to concern us but it has happened so often that it does not really surprise us anymore. AND THEN, when we go back to the playroom all the parents are kind of hushed. They are waiting to see if we got bad news but once we tell them it is just another delay, everything goes back to normal. It is amazing what you can consider normal after awhile.
The good news about this was that Nathan got to eat right away and of course the bad news is that we are delayed a week and that makes it that much longer to the end of these phases. And with it being so busy in there, the nurses couldn't get to us right away in order to put Heparin in Nathan's port and de-access him so that we could leave. Finally, shortly before noon Nathan gets de-accessed and we are free to go. By the time we pick up the other boys from Shelley's mom's house, have a bite to eat and get home it is almost 2pm. So from 8am to 2pm and all we got was blood work done - sheesh!
Shelley took the boys to visit their cousins in the afternoon and Johnathan came back with them so that he could go to Carter's ball practice tonight. I wasn't feeling very good so Shelley took all four boys to Carter's ball practice and she said that they all did very well there. They played a mini game. Every time Justin was up to bat, he would wiggle his hips and say "I'm a real baseball player". Nathan has a solid hit and would line drive it up the middle. And Johnathan took it easy on his Auntie as he only swung with little effort rather than a full swing. The fresh air really tuckered out the boys tonight so they went easily to bed.
Tomorrow will be a day at home.
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