Olivers' counts are good today. His white blood count is just within normal range, with an ANC of 2856. His Reds and hemoglobin are just a smidgen below normal and his platelets are within normal range as well.
He has his last treatment of this round of chemo tomorrow. His counts will dip slightly as a result a few days later only to bounce back up again, and he gets a break between this and the next round that will start Sept 6th.
They have scheduled an Echo on his heart today (Oliver had open heart surgery at 4 months old to repair a hole in his heart - he had a ventricular septal defect or VSD). There is a new drug that could affect his heart so they will get his baseline and keep looking into his heart during this round. Its kind of scarey since the side effect uses the word 'permanently' -
He is doing great otherwise. The fuzz on his head had stopped growing due to the recent round of chemo treatment these last few weeks. We suspect this will begin to fall out as well once we start this intense phase. We will grow hair in 2012 though! His treatments will be spaced enough that he should start growing it back. Who knows though.
School starts next week. He will continue to have at home visits from his teachers when counts and time permits. Its going to be a challenge with all his appointments and not knowing when he will be in the hospital (and how many times and for how long). He loves his new brother as well and is always trying to help out with him (rubbing and patting his back to burp him is the latest he wants to do).
