Moving Toward the Light

Another Chemo day up.

And another Chemo day down.

This boy, Kean, I tell you is a trooper.

We had an extra amount of waiting (they were having computer problems)

Lucky for us, we had the perfect "Chemo Date" today, Kris Pattee

who helped wrangle the boy.

We also had the music therapist singing Sound of Music tunes.

 Kean's port is frequently "persnickety" and today was no

exception.  We had a rough time getting blood out of him

but thankfully the nurse finally got the red stuff to flow- enough.

 Surprisingly, his counts are good -for him

and right where they want them to be.

We met with his doc, Dr. Camilo and talked 

once again about the end and what that will look like.

Get this, once he finishes his Chemo, that's it.

Dr. Camilo told me they won't do a big bone marrow draw

to see if there's any cancer lurking in his body.

That shocked me.

But Dr. Camilo said research has found that it is not worth it

to put the kids through that pain and trauma.  Oftentimes, really 

small amounts of cancer hiding out won't show up in those tests.

And if a child still has cancer, it will manifest itself in other ways

(wacky blood counts, rash, fever etc).

Kinda crazy-- we'll just finish and hope it's the end.

Meanwhile, back to today.

When they went to give him his Chemo today, the nurse

noticed a problem.

 His port was no longer accessed.  His port is what we use

to get blood and to give Chemo.

 If you look carefully in this picture, you can see

how big the catheter needle is.  It was completely

out of his chest and bent down.  Even though

his chest was bloody, thank goodness it was bent down

so it wasn't poking him!!

 Poor little guy had to be accessed again.

He may look patient here...

 but truth be told, he wasn't happy about it -- at all.

Thankfully, we got it in and got back to business.

 He's been doing great overall tonight. 

It really hasn't hit yet.

It probably doesn't hurt things that Byron took

him for a long motorcycle ride.

I took these cute girls to a Mother/Daughter church

dinner and party.

Loooonnnnnggg day.

But we are getting there.

The light is growing very bright at the end of this tunnel.