In the last five days I have had the pleasure for the first time in many months of Oscar just 'being', without any virus impacting on his precious little personality. It was great to get a glimpse of who he is underneath the endless stream of head colds and virus's and the medication cycle that is his 'normal'. He is such a chatter box and an absolute delight.
So it came as no surprise that his bloods are now very low. This is because we increased the chemo at a time when his bloods were showing high due to the constant impact of virus's in his system. Its hard for the Dr's to know that its a virus when it goes on for so many months and they worry that they aren't giving him enough chemo to do the most important job of killing off any dormant leukemic blood cells. So we increased the chemo to be cautious and now his bloods are crashing down and he is neutropenic.
We will decrease the chemo but his bloods will continue to fall for the next week or two and we have to keep a careful eye on him in case he gets a temperature as he has nothing to fight it off. At the moment his neutrophils are 0.5 and may drop to zero and his white cells are 1.4 and may also drop close to zero in which case it may be a trip to hospital for a few days. The platelets are doing well at the moment at 203 but they always follow the white blood cells so they will drop too in the next fortnight.
All in all, all is well. This is just part of the journey and we know what to do to take care of him. In the mean time it is tempting to consider taking him out of preschool for a few weeks to protect him, although Auden brings everything home anyway. Food for thought over the weekend.
I know I keep promising photo's but life keeps bumbling along around me at such a pace I never get more than a few things on my 'to do' list completed. Some day it will happen...
Thanks for checking in on us. Dr Margaret is away for whole month and we will miss her lots but she will be back in time for the big day and will perform Oscar's bone marrow biopsy and lumber puncture on 28th June (like anything, this date can change so don't fix it too firmly in your mind but if it does pop into your mind from time to time send it happy vibes for us).
We ran into some old friends, some of whom are doing so much better than when I last saw them I feel humbled at the tremendous strength they have shown to beat the very bad odds they were dealt, and some of whom are not doing so well as the dreaded cancer has returned to ravage their families again. My heart goes out to them and to all families everywhere.
Take care beautiful people and love, love, love one another. x
No comments:
Post a Comment