Oliver will not have his final treatment of this round tomorrow.
His ANC is still low at 250 with his WBC actually going down to 1.0
His RBC and Hemoglobin changed slightly while his platelets took a dive from where they were to 81K.
They want to check his counts on Tuesday now and if his ANC is above 500, they will give treatment on Wednesday, but dial back the one medication 20%.
Then he gets a two week break at least, his counts have to then be high enough to start up our final phase of treatment... maintenance.
For those who want a refresher, full maintenance are treatments in 12 week cycles. Each cycle starts off with a spinal, then chemo via IV (vincristine). He has to take the nasty steroid (decadron) for 5 days to start the cycle as well. He has an oral drug called 6MP to take every night on an empty stomach. He also has the oral version of methotrexate that he will take once a week, and will continue taking the antibiotic septra every weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) as he has been this entire time. This will continue to the summer of 2013. He will also take the antibiotic for another 6 months past when he is done with maintenance.
It's still a long time to go in reality, but its going to be much easier on him. The goal is to keep his ANC in a normal range so there may be some adjusting of the 6MP dosage from time to time as that can cause count issues. But it should be enough to let him start enjoying group activity again.. like going back to school.
We had a great xmas. Oliver got a bunch of cool presents from lots of people. Thank you all so much! Lots of pictures posted on flickr and a video (2nd one on the page) on youtube. xmas dinner was at Dan's cousins house but Oliver could not go so we hung out at Nana and Jichans watching Cars 2 several times until everyone came back from dinner.
Nothing much else going on. Oliver is talking more and more and making longer sentences, although some things he adds to make it long he doesn't really understand what it means. For example, he's been adding 'on purpose' to a phrase making a longer sentence but he isn't sure what it means, only that we think its funny so he does it all the time to everything he has been saying. Its cute. We are just waiting when we can start not being so cautious about going places with people indoors, etc. or just even going to play at the park. Soon.
We are ready to start the new year!
