Monday 22nd February 2010

Well after the doom and gloom news we had on Saturday we had some good news today. Luke will be able to come home on Wednesday. Yeah!!!! He has his last chemo via his central line tomorrow. He then has to go back in next Monday to have the last treatment on this induction chemo phase. That will be a lumbar puncture and chemo injected into the spinal fluid. He did wonder what he was going to do in hospital for the days in between treatments. So he was really excited that he will be able to come home.

As I mentioned before, after the last treatment he will then have to wait 1 to 1.5 weeks for his bloods to do their own thing and then go in for a bone marrow biopsy to check if he has achieved remission. So we really won't know much until then.

I've been feeling a bit off since yesterday. A bit of a sore throat that I don't know if it will develop into a cough, or if it is just a mixture of hospital air conditioning, emotional stress or being overtired. What ever it is, Murray and Luke have banned me from the hospital as we can't risk him getting an infection. So I've been in contact constantly through the day on the mobile. It was my night on tonight so Murray will be doing a double shift! In the meantime I'm dosing up on strepsils and drinking lemsips just in case.
Amy didn't go to school today, she is looking a bit run down and we decided last night that we were going to take the phones off the hook and have a catch up on sleep this morning. Certainly felt a bit more refreshed.

We are currently at Heidi & Nev's celebrating Mary's 10th birthday. Had a lovely dinner and the cake looks great!

We went out late this afternoon and bought a new laptop. Luke has been madly researching them over the past few days on the old laptop in the hospital.(Certainly kept him entertained and gave him something to do). Luke has decided he would like to try and keep up with some school work online as he's in Year 12. We needed something with a stronger processor to cope with his IT classes, such as CAD and programming, especially if we do end up in Sydney for 3 months.
We have also decided to get a new Queen size bed for Luke. He currently has a king single bed but he is so tall and really needs to have the space to move around in bed. He was also complaining when he was sick at home for the week before we went to hospital that he could feel springs.(I don't know how as his mattress isn't that old). If we do this we should probably do a mini makeover of his room to make things fit, including new paint job as he's getting a bit old for the bright blue he currently has. So we have our work cut out for us in the next few weeks if that goes ahead.

Luke's blood levels over the past few days are:
21/2 Haemaglobin 105 / White Cell Count 1.9 / Platelets 219 / Neutrophils 0.62
22/2 Haemaglobin 101 / White Cell Count 2.3 / Platelets 258 / Neutrophils 1.06

Luke's platelets have gone through the roof - the nurse joked they might need to take some back soon! This is the first time in a few weeks that Luke hasn't been Neutropenic. Officially this is when neutrophils are .50 and under but in his case they've said under 1.0. He's really hoping this stays that way as he is craving a saigon roll from the Asian Hub!! His friends will know what that is.
I'd imagine with his last dose of chemo this will drop though and he will have to watch what he is eating.