Posts made in May, 2012

We had another checkup on Friday. Ethan’s counts were better (ANC 850) so we are able to start the next phase of treatment. He had spinal methotrexate yesterday and we will start high dose IV methotrexate on Monday morning in the hospital. It’s a unique treatment. They literally pump him over the limit with this drug and then give a “rescue” drug (leucovorin) 24 hours later to shut off the effects before it becomes toxic. Then we have to sit in the hospital and wait until it clears his blood stream. They told us to expect to be in the hospital until Friday the 18th. We will repeat this every other week for two months. We’ve asked specifically to be admitted on a Monday because it is their lowest census day and the chances of us being...

Check out this video filmed in the SCCA Unit at Seattle Children’s. Ethan’s little friend Sam is featured (he’s the one missing all the teeth!).

Well. Dang. I should just give up on trying to predict how this is all going to play out. We went in for our weekly appointment today and instead of getting our start of Interim Maintenance chemo we got sent home. Ethan’s ANC (natural immunity) was 135 despite having had no chemotherapy for nine days (normal is at least 1000). He qualifies as severely neutropenic which means: no chemo, no moving on to Interim Maintenance and no checking into the hospital on Monday. I expect it may have been a result of the massive inflammation his body had to deal with after the anaphylactic shock. In any case, I really wasn’t expecting it. This is the lowest his ANC has been since he was diagnosed. I was literally dumbfounded. So Ethan is officially “bubble...

Another phase of treatment down. We have finished Consolidation! Next Ethan moves on to Interim Maintenance. We are enrolled in a research study testing high dose methotrexate. Unfortunately this means we must do several hospital stays over the next two months. I feel the benefit outweighs the inconvenience. High dose methotrexate is already standard of care for B-cell ALL kids and has shown great promise in preventing relapse in T-cell kids. The methotrexate is given via IV and then 48 hours later a second drug is given to inactivate the methotrexate. Then we have to wait for it to clear the bloodstream before we can go home. So we will be there at least two nights but it maybe up to six nights. We will receive the same treatment on May 21st, June 4th and June...