Monday 14th February 2011

Sorry it's been a while since I blogged. Luke has had a few weeks of ups and downs in neutrophil levels that have stopped him doing things.
On Monday 31st Jan, Luke was due to start up chemo again after a little mini break however chemo was put on hold as his neutrophils were too low and he had a badly infected big toe. He was given antibiotics and a PEG injection to increase his immune system. He had also had trouble with his central line not giving blood, so they urokinased the line (like putting draino through the line) to clear it. It seems to have worked. After Luke's hair growing back quite well - darker and curlier than before - he unfortunately has lost most of it all again with this cycle.

The PEG injection worked miracles and instantly boost his neutrophils. This meant he was able to attend orientation at university with a friend on the Wednesday. Luke's actual orientation session for his IT course was being held on the Thursday however the Doctors decided to recommence chemo as his blood levels were okay. As chemo went too long throughout the day, he missed the session.
Monday 7th February was the 1st day of university for Luke and he was able to go to his first lecture. After lunch he had to go to the hospital for a lumbar puncture and chemo. That afternoon his blood levels showed he was neutropenic and he actually shouldn't have gone to uni. Unfortunately it is now a week later and Luke has literally no neutrophils so he is not able to go out in public places and as such has not been able to go back to uni. At least Luke can access all the lectures on the University of Canberra website. He said it's all been pretty boring stuff so far as it's all just introductions. We don't know when his neutrophils will pick up and how long that will mean he misses uni. It could be a few days or a few weeks.

The good news is that today Luke has finally stopped taking insulin for the steroid induced diabetes. Over the past week the insulin levels have slowly been decreasing and his blood sugar levels have been staying in a normal range. So hopefully now that the insulin has stopped things will return back to normal.

Luke has a few more chemo treatments left for this cycle. This should take him through till the 24th February. Luke will then see the specialist on the 2nd March for a review and also to get his central line taken out. Yay! It will be so good for Luke to have the tubes from his chest that have dangled around for the past year taken out. The reason they can take out the central line is that he will be going to maintenance chemo which will consist of mainly chemo tablets, steroids and the odd chemo injection.

Poor Mum has been having had a rough trot. She went into hospital on Saturday 5th for exploratory surgery on her bladder. She did all the fasting requirements and was sat in the waiting room along with lots of other patients. A doctor came out to announce that unfortunately all surgeries would have to be postponed as they couldn't get the camera working and had tried several others but it appeared to be a problem with the connecting equipment that couldn't be fixed on a weekend.
Mum was really disappointed. Her surgery has now been rescheduled for the 19th February with another doctor. So she still has the catheter. Hopefully things will be fixed up this time.

Amy started back at school last Tuesday. She is now in Year 10. She did get her elective of food and hospitality that she wanted. She was given Music as her other elective however she changed this to another cooking class called Ethical Cooking. So I'm hoping we have lots of tasty treats coming our way!
She has to do work experience in May however she has absolutely no idea what she wants to do with herself.

That's all our news for now.