No fever today!

And ANC is 340.  The doctors and nurses are getting us ready to go home tomorrow.  That is, I have been under training.  IV antibiotics Ancef 10pm, 6am, and 2pm, every day.  Vanc lock 12:45pm every day.   We will go home tomorrow after the 2pm Ancef.  Home care nurse is scheduled to come Saturday for the Vanc lock and 2pm Ancef.   The training I got for these is much better than AraC -- well, I didn't really get a training for AraC.  I just videotaped a random nurse doing it once and watched it a couple of times.  I think I feel more comfortable doing it now.

JW's mom and Alex came to visit Lucas yesterday lunch time.  The flu season restriction that no visit for kids under 12 is lifted as of last Saturday.  It's great to see my healthy kid Alex.  He turned 4 1/2 on Tuesday and too bad I didn't give him a 1/2 birthday cake.  I hope we will be home next Tuesday for Lucas's 3 year old birthday.  The doctors might want us come back Monday/Tuesday for the next round of chemo, which requires hospital stays.   Maybe they will give us 1-2 extra days to recover and celebrate.  But it was sad to see Lucas saying goodbye to grandma.  She probably felt sad also as she doesn't plan to come to US again -- she says she is aging quickly and could be more a person who needs to be taken care of, than a caregiver.  We do not plan to go back to China at least until 6 months after his treatment ends and port removed.  So it will be at least 3.5 years away.  I felt sorry for her -- I think I will feel sadder if leukemia happened to my grandchild than to my child.  I guess I feel I'm doing more with a child than I could with a grandchild.

JW is driving his mom to Chicago this afternoon so she can catch the direct flight to go back to China tomorrow morning.  My parents arrived late last night/early this morning.  Lucas slept from 7:30pm to 7:30am last night -- the best ever for a long time.  And he has been napping since 2:30pm.  This is a lot of sleep for him as he usually only needs 11 hours of sleep these days.  Hopefully this means he is recuperating.

We are taking hygiene to a new level after this blood infection incidence.  I just ordered more environmental friendly/toxics-free anti-bacteria sprays and wipes (some for face and hands, some for household surfaces),   individually wrapped flossers (so our hands don't need to go into his mouth) and extra soft toothbrushes (so less chance of bleeding gums), and two steam mops/cleaners.  180 degrees steam for 5 seconds would kill 99.9% of the bacteria.  A big sigh again.  We thought having him live in a glass container is enough, but apparently the bacteria in his own mouth and on his own skin is something we need to guard against as well.  I've also got probiotics in the form of gummy bears and chewable tablets, to help him deal with the antibiotics better.  There must be other things I could improve.  Whatever it takes to preserve the port and decrease the possibility of future infections, I will do it!  I'm so glad I can be his 100% devoted mom for 4 weeks.  I always miss my maternity leaves!

But just to say that one can only do this much and sometimes the best is not good enough.  I was feeding him crackers while the home care training nurse came to teach me around lunch tie.  Lucas has a sore on his upper lip and it had a scab. I stopped feeding him and he said he wanted to have the crackers on his own.  So I cleaned his hands and let him do it.  Within 1 minute he started crying as the scab fell immaturely and it must have hurt and I couldn't tell it was bleeding or not.  With the scab off, I could finally tell that it's a canker sore inside of his lip at the edge.  I was being very careful to avoid the sore when I was feeding him -- but I was busy with the nurse and he was begging for food.  I felt bad that I might have introduced possible bacteria into his blood stream again.  This is just so hard.   Most importantly we need his ANC higher so he could fight off such things on his own, because this is the most effective and sometimes there's just no way to prevent infection when his ANC is zero.  But we also know that as close as one can stick to the chemo protocol, the closer ones outcome is to the empirical cure rate.  Nevertheless, if we parents have any say in the future as postponing chemo during low ANC, we will try to bargain for more recovery time.  Sometimes 1/2 week is all he needs to get the right balance (if there's one).  Starting the second 4 week round of consolidation chemo when his ANC barely made the cutoff turned out to be a very tough period for him.  I do wish the doctors and clinics are more flexible so if a delay is needed, one doesn't have to delay a whole week.  I will try to see if we can start the next round next Wed/Thurs, instead of either next Monday or the Monday after next.

Thank you for all the emails and messages!  And thank you for reading my rambling!  :)