Weekly Check Up - Part One - Tuesday, December 16

Over the weekend we attended a Starlight event at Toys R’Us and then had a nice family brunch at Denny’s after. The kids love the hot chocolate. Clearly, they don’t get out much.

 

Eric also had a play date and birthday party. He pushed through the weekend, but Monday morning his headache was too bad to go to school. He lounged on the couch for most of the day. Tuesday morning when I woke him up to get ready for his appointment at clinic I said, “time to go get some blood!” and he gave a sleepy “yay!” We had to have an early-ish appointment because he had an endocrine appointment booked for 1:45 and we needed to get both blood and platelets in first. Both had been pre-ordered, but the platelets were ready; whereas, transfusion medicine needed a group and screen before they would prepare the blood. So we got started with the platelets pretty quickly and the blood was ready not too long after the platelets were done. Despite how smoothly everything seemed to flow, we weren’t finished until 2pm. The unit clerk called endocrine to let them know we were running a little late and it turns out endocrine was running late too, so we got in there about 2:15 and didn’t leave the hospital until after 3pm when it was very, very rainy, and dark, and traffic was terrible. We were at the hospital for 6 hours and had 2.5 hours of driving. It was a very long day.

Additionally, I had a somewhat concerning chat with Eric’s Oncologist. His blast count jumped up to 1.0 in his peripheral blood from 0.4 on Friday. It is possible that the med is working and his marrow is making healthy cells while at the same time the unhappy part of his marrow is creating these blasts unchecked by a traditional chemotherapy. However, it is also possible that the med is not working at all and his disease is surging. Eric’s doctor is considering all possibilities but is concerned enough to bump up his bone marrow biopsy. It had been planned for next week but will now take place on Friday. He wants to get a look in the marrow to have a better understanding what is happening. This way we should also get some preliminary results before Christmas and can make a plan for after Christmas, instead of waiting for the results over the holidays. Honestly, waiting for results in either scenario sucks and I wish we could celebrate Christmas without any of this worry, but that hasn’t been our reality for a long time now. On the plus side, with Eric’s transfusions yesterday, he is back to feeling good and ready for a couple more days of school before the Christmas break. Of course, we woke up without power this morning and the start of Eric’s school day has been delayed. Surprisingly, Joel’s school has power and he headed out on time this morning.