Still recovering

Today we insisted to have a CBC -- there's a kid on ALL list who was scheduled to be OT (off treatment) 9/16, who had been on chemo hold for 3 weeks because of low counts, and who was confirmed to have relapsed.  The desperation of that mother was felt by all parents on the ALL list.  We all live in the fear that the worse could happen, as if our initial diagnosis of a kid with leukemia was not dreadful enough.  Today is day 22 of chemo hold for Lucas -- we are getting rather anxious after we hear about that particular relapse story.

So we went today and I woke up in the middle of the night last night and couldn't fall back to sleep.  If one is afraid of something during the day, the night only makes it more intense.  The nurse practitioner convinced us to go straight home after the finger poke as she believed that this whole CBC was unnecessary and said they would call us with results.  The finger poke was 9:30am.  I called 11:30am, then 1pm, to leave a message to ask for counts.  I finally got a call close to 2 and everything was looking good.  Hgb 11.8, platelets 147, and ANC 435.  Not high enough to restart chemo today, but the numbers are improving and it looks really promising for next Tuesday (that's the day the nurse practitioner scheduled us to come in anyway).  

Lucas will still be home-bound and miss all the fun for the weekend.  Alex will go swimming with dad tomorrow morning, followed by lunch with his two best friends before they go to the family fun event at our church.  Sunday we will have our routine Sunday school -- morning at church and afternoon at Chinese school.  Alex has been more aggressive after he restarted preK and he hit Lucas again tonight. So I had to take away his privilege.  I gave him choice -- there are three fun things I planned for him this weekend (1) lunch and play date with his friends (2) sleep in the same bed with mommy and Lucas Saturday night, and (3) a trip to the fancy bakery for a treat with mommy after Sunday school.  I would have chosen to forfeit (2) if I were him, but he chose to let go of (3) and said he could do with one less serving of junk food.  I'm afraid that I instilled healthy eating to an extreme with Alex.  He refuses treats very readily now.  I think it's part of his personality though, because the same teaching doesn't show any effect on Lucas.

Here are some pictures my cousin took when he visited us around the time Lucas started his LTM.  Lucas has since learned how to swallow a pill and he does that so quickly with very little water.   Yippee -- no more pills to crush and less worry about liquid form of oral MTX causing sores on the lips and inside his mouth!