Tuesday 2nd March 2010

Okay so I've missed a few nights! Sorry about that. I've been busy doing an application for a round of positions at work - not something I really wanted to do given our situation but thought I shouldn't let the opportunity pass me by.
I've also been playing apprentice to the "masterchef". He cooked a lovely stuffed chicken breast wrapped in prosciutto and roast veges. The stuffing was a Philadelphia cream cheese/basil/pine nut/Parmesan cheese. Very yummy!
His Nan, Aunty Nat and Aunty Heidi bought a white chefs shirt (don't know the official term) for the budding chef!!

Murray and I have been playing decorators and cleaners today! Luke's new mattress arrived and we needed to clear out his old bed and also took the opportunity to clean out all of his drawers /storage boxes and wardrobe. What a lot of rubbish! I thought I was a hoarder - but I've got nothing on him! His new bed looks great - a white fake look leather bedhead and base. With all the new linen it really brightens up his room.

Luke had the nurse coming each day to take blood and they still have been having trouble getting it out of the central line straight away. It seems to be taking quite a few saline flushes. Luke went into hospital yesterday to have his last day of chemo treatment for the induction phase. It was a lumbar puncture to check the spinal fluid and then chemo injected into the spinal fluid. It was great to have the first round of treatment finished. Yeah!!

Luke's blood results for the last few days are:
27/2 Haemaglobin 107 / White Cell Count 3.1 / Platelets 220 / Neutrophils 2.58
28/2 Haemaglobin 100 / White Cell Count 2.5 / Platelets 213 / Neutrophils 1.5
1/3 Haemaglobin 97 / White Cell Count 4.2 / Platelets 237 / Neutrophils 3.20

As he has finished chemo the nurse was going to drop back to getting bloods every 2 days - hence no blood results today.

Originally we were told that Luke's bone marrow biopsy was going to be on the 11th March with probably about 3 weeks break from chemo. We then found out the biopsy would be this Thursday instead. Only to have a call from one of the doctors today to say that they wanted to do the biopsy tomorrow instead followed by a CAT scan on Thursday. The results of the biopsy will probably take about 3 - 4 days so we won't know until then if he has achieved remission. So it will be a long weekend waiting anxiously!! They then want to start the next round of chemo next Wednesday, which is a 9 week consolidation chemo phase. So unfortunately for Luke there won't be much of a break. At this stage we are still scheduled to go to Sydney on the 25th March but we are concerned that he will be about 14 days into his chemo and probably quite neutropenic. So they are looking into that a bit further at the moment.

As we came back out of hospital last week Murray and I needed to sit down and work out what we were going to do about work. We can't believe that we lost February and it's been 5 weeks since we found out Luke has leukaemia.
Obviously Murray and I would like to share the care of Luke through the week so I ended up dropping my part time hours back to 2 days per week (Mon/Tue) and Murray will work the other 3 days(Wed - Fri). So Murray starts back at work tomorrow morning and I'll be starting next week. Obviously this will need to remain flexible depending on what's around the corner. We know it's going to be a long road and we are lucky that both our workplaces have been so flexible for us.