First week in LTM

Tuesday I took Lucas for his lumbar puncture.  We had a very responsive anesthesiologist and she looked into Lucas's medical record and gave me a list of all the anesthesia drugs he has received.  Most often he was just given the first two. But he was crying very hard on Tuesday for mommy when he got pushed in.  The outpatient-only surgical center is very strict about not letting parents go in with the kids.  I tried to show him the video I took when he was quite and calmly pushed in once.  He told me that it was Alex and not him.  He was still a baby and wanted his mommy.  I have always been the one who takes him to his lumbar punctures since he very clearly prefers me to Jianwei.  He only wanted me to hold him as soon as it gets dark when he was only four months old.  He has been a mummy's boy throughout.  The only person that he found some comfort in when I'm out at work has been my mom.  But if he continues trying to be a baby, maybe I will let Jianwei take him instead.  When anesthesiologist sees an agitated kid, they tend to use Versed which makes the recovery process slower for Lucas.  He was dazed on Tuesday for a long time.

Lucas takes prednisone as steroids twice a day right after breakfast and dinner for five days.  Then he takes 6-mercaptopurine every evening.  Since he has been having poor appetite and losing weight, we have been feeding him around the clock and he was surely not taking no food after dinner very well.  Hopefully he will get used to it as heeds to take the drug everyday for the next 2.75 years.

After I read some journals on the Journal of Pediatric Oncology/Hematology and commutators with Jianwei, he wrote to Dr. Pui at St. Jude to ask a few questions concerning us.  Dr. Pui, who has been treating leukemia in kids for the last three decades and well respected, is also very responsive to our emails (more so than our own doctor).  He told us that many Chinese descent kids do not handle full dose of 6-mercaptopurine well and need to be adjusted to two-thirds of the dose.