End of Cycle 1

Today was day 16 of treatment, and the last day of his first cycle. We were up pretty late last night with Nathan, he is starting to lose his hair and it was getting in his mouth and wrapped around his pacifier.

His counts are still pretty low, so if you’re not feeling well and want to visit please wait a few more days, but his counts are on the way back up. He has been tugging on his ear, and the doctor said they are a little red and prescribed some medicine. She said to only fill it if we see him start tugging at his ears more. Because of his situation if he gets a fever we will be automatically admitted to the hospital.

Some good news so far, the doctor today examined him twice and said that she felt as though his tumor was smaller. His body is responding well to the treatment and he is a little anemic but they said that’s to be expected. We’ve been concerned about his eating so we picked up some single grain oatmeal that you give babies and are hoping we can get him to eat that. We’ve not been terribly successful but we haven’t run out of ideas yet!

His second cycle starts on Tuesday with a visit to the hospital. We will stop by the cancer center first to get his port accessed and do lab work. If he is still low they will postpone the treatment for a week, but the doctor thinks he’s on track to start his second cycle on Tuesday.

If everything goes well, they will run him through the cat scan at the end of the second cycle to check the progress. If the tumor has gone down enough the surgery will be scheduled at KU-Med on their next available slot. We are hopeful that the tumor has gone down far enough to operate, if not Nathan will need to be on two more cycles.

It’s hard to believe he has anything wrong with him, he is still so active, but there are highs and lows for sure.