Thursday's Check Up

Hi!

We had a late afternoon check up yesterday back at the regular Cancer Center, with Hans' Oncologist, Dr. Heidi Russell. It was very chaotic at first. When we pulled into the parking garage, after having 5 days completely off of TCH, Hans screamed "No, mommy, no, I don't want to wake up here!" Poor baby. Elle and I explained to him that it was just a clinic visit, and after about 45 minutes to an hour he calmed down. About then, it was time for the nurse to draw labs out of his PICC line. After three nurses tried for 40 minutes, they ended up having to get blood through a venipuncture. Both Hans and I were in tears at this point. The poor little guy was being such a good sport, and then had to go through that.

It was nice to see all the nurses and support staff,as well as our familiar friend Dr. Russell! It had been almost 2 months since we were turned over to BMT. Hans was happy to even get a surprise pop-in visit by Dr. Rainusso, a Pediatric Oncology Fellow who Hans refers to as "my real buddy." Dr. Russell proclaims that, "Hans is doing spectacularly!" Her only real concern at this point is his weight. Our objective has to be to fatten him up. He is down to 10.8 Kilos. I try my best to offer him food around the clock and meet as many of his food and drink requests as reasonable, or maybe more than what's reasonable. He just doesn't seem to eat a large volume of food right now.

Since we were so late in the day, and had had problems drawing labs, all of his counts weren't back yet by the time we me with her. But, his Complete Blood Count was back. Everything looked great! His Hemoglobin and White Counts are holding their own, and the Platelets are continuing to climb. This essentially means that the stem cells have engrafted - found the bone marrow and set up shop to make these three types of cells on their own. The Liver Panel and the Electrolytes didn't come back, but we got a call today informing us that there was a clot in the sample so no results could be determined. The good news is that Hans looks so good that Dr. Russell didn't even care! She said we were okay to come back on Tuesday. After that, we may not have to come back for two weeks. She also explained that the tubes can come out as soon as we're sure Hans can eat enough to gain a little weight and won't have to go back on TPN. So it was all-in-all a great visit. It was nice for me to have Elle out of school and with me. She is a great little helper and I didn't have to worry about getting back to her! I feel that Hans is having a little more energy and doing a little more physically and socially each day. I'm sorry if he's been mean to you, yelled at you, or told you to get out. This is a huge adjustment for him and I do think he's doing his best!

Lara