Back on track

Despite spending four nights in the hospital, Nick never really felt unwell. He just lost his voice and had a cough, which improved fairly quickly over the next couple of days. With no sign of bacteria, the doctors suspect it was an upper respiratory viral infection. Although he was pleased to be released, he didn’t seem to find the experience too difficult. He had his own room with a wall of windows and an ensuite bathroom. He had his own personal assistant (yours truly) sitting by his bedside all day who would fetch him smoothies or sandwiches or apple fritters to supplement the hospital food, and he had a couple of friends who came by one evening armed with snacks and board games and helped distract him for a few hours (while wearing the requisite face masks and gloves). He had his Beats headphones and his iPad mini and whatever he was watching kept him chuckling at regular intervals.

He was discharged on Sunday and we saw the hematologist today. His third chemo session has been re-scheduled for Friday. His neutrophils were still only .2 when we left the hospital – anything below .5 is considered critical – so we’re being ultra-vigilant for the next little while at least. His white cells have been lower than would be expected since he started his chemo treatments. While it’s normal for the count to go down after chemo, it usually recovers before the next treatment. But every person reacts differently. They’ll continue to push through the treatments but if he gets another infection he’ll likely be put on medication to boost his cell counts. The medication may increase the risk of lung toxicity, so they don’t use it unless it’s necessary.

Nick’s bone marrow biopsy from Kingston Hospital also showed that his marrow was hypo-cellular (low cell count) before he started treatment. We’ve been waiting about six weeks now for genetic tests to be completed on those samples. Our hematologist said it would be very unusual for him to have bone marrow failure given his age and general health. She suspects it may be a false result caused by the small sample size…which could unfortunately mean another bone marrow aspirate and biopsy to confirm.

So…encouraging that he’s back on track with his treatment and feeling relatively healthy, but the cell count talk is all a bit unnerving. And, as much as Nick loves us, I imagine it’s rather difficult for him to have only his parents as company.

He was getting tired of waking up with hair all over his pillow so he asked Ray to pre-emptively shave his head. I know I’m his mom, but I don’t think I’m being biased when I say he has a very nicely-shaped cranium.