Tuesday 22nd March 2011

All is going well now with Luke. He did get out of hospital on Saturday 12th March. He didn't get any more temperatures which was good. He came out of hospital with two big bandaged toes in his "moon shoes". It was great fun trying to get him in the shower. I had to put his fut in a freezer bag first then tape it and then put a boot bag over the top and tape it up again. Poor Luke, the first time I taped his feet up he got all light headed and I'd thought I'd cut off his circulation to his feet. Murray and I shoved him in the shower so quickly to try and get the shower over and done with as quickly as possible!! Needless to say he was not that keen to get back in the shower the next day! He had his bandages on his toes changed on Thursday 17th. The surgeon was happy with how everything went. He did say that one of his toenails would more than likely fall off as it lifted up during the operation. He was take the bandages off and shower normally this Monday 21st. They look sore but are actually quite good. He's getting around slowly in thongs as he's been told to let the air get at them.

Luke started the first of his 3 monthly cycles of maintenance chemo on Monday. This is going to be much better than any cycles he's had. The cycle basically consists of daily Mercaptopurine chemo tablets / Methotrexate chemo tablet once a week / Steroids - Prednisolone in 5 day blocks - once a month / Vincristine - a chemo drug via a cannula once a month and finally a lumbar puncture with Methotrexate chemo inserted into the spine on day one of the cycle.He'll be on the same cycle now for the next 2 years with possibly only a week or two between cycles. So he's still got a long road ahead of him but hopefully a much easier, smoother road.

Hopefully he shouldn't become neutropenic during the cycle however we won't know until we see how he reacts to the cycle. Fingers crossed!
He's trying to catch up with university work at the moment with being out of action for quite a few weeks. He's had a few assignments all due now - so he has applied for a few extensions. So hopefully he can catch up okay.

I've had a few people asking if anyone we knew was doing Shave for a Cure for the Leukaemia Foundation. I'm afraid I'm not brave enough to do it. I have found out that one of Luke's friends has recently shaved his head- he did it last year too. His name is Daniel Sims. If you would like to sponsor him you can go to the Shave for a cure link on this blog site and do a search for him as an individual. Thanks yet again Daniel - you are a top guy.

That's all our news for now. Hopefully we can get back to a bit of 'normality' with Murray going back to work full time and I'm back 3 days per week. Amy is going along really well in Year 10 and also enjoying getting lots of money with her casual job at Donut King. She loves spending lots of money on clothes. I'll update when I have any news to tell - if that becomes less frequent, that will actually be a good sign as that means no news is good news.