Posts made in February, 2012

And now a short lesson about your blood. Those whose eyes cross at the technical stuff… look away! Since getting Ethan’s diagnosis one week ago we learned how quickly and easily parents become obsessed with lab reports. I never appreciated how much you can know about your health just from testing the blood. One of the hallmarks of leukemia is at diagnosis the white blood cell count is very high. This is because a ton of leukemic lymphocytes (white blood cells) nicknamed blasts are having a party in the blood and bone marrow. Blasts are very immature white blood cells. They are created rapidly as leukemia progresses, are not effective at preventing infection and crowd out all the healthy blood cells. At diagnosis Ethan had 32,800 white blood cells per...

Prednisone is an odd drug. One of my most keen memories of my brother having cancer (I was 10 at the time) is the prednisone rage. He would throw fits worthy of a gold medal. Well Ethan is on day 5 and we are seeing glimmers of how this steroid is affecting him. His normal sunshiny self has been more moody and withdrawn. Then when it came time for oral meds tonight we had our first melt down. I could see the confusion in his eyes even behind the anger. When I asked if he felt not like himself, his little grumpy nod just about broke my heart. But I can choose to love the many shades and moods of Ethan right now because it means he is here for me to hold. And no matter how grumpy he gets, at the end of the day he still wants me to cuddle up in his bed and massage...

Things are going pretty well here. Ethan is more alert, has a bigger appetite and his labs are looking good. They have reduced his IV fluids and stopped several medications that were managing symptoms. We are staying ahead of the nausea pretty well. Right now we are in a holding pattern to see when we can leave the hospital. The reasons why they are holding us now are: to make sure that he can maintain hydration without an IV, that all his elimination patterns are normal, continued improvement in his labs. If we can get past these things (and not have any other problems arise) then we will be free to start outpatient care. We are shooting for a Wednesday or Thursday discharge. Justin and I are doing better. This whole thing is a wild adjustment. Sometimes I just...