Fried...

The Monkeys...in action at clinic.

Hans looking for his hat, thrown onto a high ledge by that pesky sis. (He loves this hat. We had a neat trip to Home Depot a couple months ago where one crew member took to hans. He came up and placed this hat on his head and Hans has worn it almost every day since. The guy said he was a resident in pediatric oncology and really made a connection with Hans. Also note the gold chain. Part of his everyday look.

The newly painted room!

Elle and her pal Genna treated themselves to a mani/pedi last week.

So, Hans was apparently hit pretty hard with this last round of chemo. We were so glad that we didn't take up Kids Unlimited on their offer of a free trip to Fiesta Texas (an amusement park) in San Antonio (about a three hour drive from us). But - it was sure nice they asked. We just pretty much laid low. Hans was a little fried looking! He had those deepset dark chemo eyes, low energy, low appetite. He was eating much and wasn't talking much. We finally realized he had a couple of mouth sores:( Mouth sores are a noted side effect of MLN8237, but it's just been a bullet we've dodged til now. We are kind of taking a good wallop from the upped dose. This is now the third round of 60mg instead of 50. I think we all wish we could go back to 50. I guess we just have to hope Hansie grows into this dose. Or, I hope the extra 10mg can mop up those stinkin' stubborn tumor cells. UGH. We just returned from TCH where we learned Hans has a whopping 7.9 HGB, platelets at 60 something and an ANC that is a mystery (not back yet). Yuck. Poor kid is taking a while to recover. This is already Day 14 of this past round:(

Whilst Hans wasn't feeling so hot/kickin back, takin it easy with Kev - Elle and I decided to PAINT! She's about to be shipped off ahead of us to Seattle, but we took this weekend to go turn her room into a tween dream. We painted in Purple, silver and chalkboard paint for a graffiti wall. It feels good to be done. But, now I look around and realize that ALL the OTHER rooms in this house could use a fresh coat. Maybe that's what we'll do with each of Hans' rough weekends...paint. Sounds like a nice idea, I'm just not sure if I'm that productive! I'm a little sore from just the one room...

Thanks for checking up on us. We'll get his counts rechecked on Thursday morning. We'll hope that we can avoid a transfusion and that they start to rebound...

Lara