Day 15: Yippe Kai Yay!

Dr. Hansen was just in here.  He's one of Kean's four Oncologists.

He finally got the Bone Marrow report back from the samples taken last Friday.

And finally, we have some great news!

Kean's sample came back with less that 5 percent "blasts"-- which probably doesn't mean

much to you but here's what we take away from the test:  Kean is in the

category of "early responders"-- meaning his body is responding to the Chemo and it is working.

Therefore, he falls into the category of having a better chance of beating this monster.

And if that's not enough to celebrate over, because he is an early responder, he gets to basically

skip out on his scheduled next Bone Marrow test on Friday.

Yeah!!!!!

Now let me catch you up to speed on a few other things.

His counts are down again today-- from 160 yesterday to 120.  So he's still extremely susceptible to infection.

We're hoping he'll start the turn around one of these days.

It's just a matter of waiting for his body to kick into gear and start making healthy cells that fight infection.

The Leukemia is like Napalm-- squeezing out all the good cells. 

He gets another dose of Chemo on Friday.  So perhaps a few more days of this...

Dr. Sandstrom, his Pediatrician stopped by the other night and hung out with me for over an hour.

Then, this morning, Dr. Showalter, the Pediatric Orthopedic Surgeon that we first saw at the beginning of this mess

popped in.  It amazes me, how busy these doctors must be and yet they show up regularly to check on Keanut and give me encouragement.  (Maybe they are really just evaluating me to see when they need to call in the white coats-- ha, ha).

We had another rough night last night.  Kean was up for a good hour and a half with pain.

The Tylenol didn't cut it and it took a while for the Morphine to work its magic.

We did, however, have Kean's favorite nurse-- Steve.

The two seem to have a sweet connection.

Steve's the only one to get high fives, knuckles and consistent smiles.

The bad news is Steve is off until Sunday... and I'm kinda hoping we won't be around to see him for a while.

Nothing personal, of course.