Always seems to be mixed results, but the good news is REALLY good

We have great news on the Apheresis!  They retested a small sample for just the stem cells and the viability was at 99%, so we’re DONE with that.  There was the concern before with the 80% viability number, but that was for the entire sample and from what the doc’s say, the stem cells themselves are much more hearty than other white blood cells, so we’re more than good to go on that part of the pretreatment process.

 

Other great news is Cam is becoming stronger and more sure in his walking and using his left arm and hand.  He is actually sitting up and taking a few steps on his own and is raising himself to standing with the help of the couch, so God has definitely blessed him and us with this progress in such a short time.  If we do help him walk, it’s only a light hold on his hands to help him keep his balance.  It’s so cool to watch his face when he does these things…you can see how proud he is of himself and that silly little grin he has shines through.

 

On the not as great news, Cam spiked a fever through the early hours of Thursday night/Friday morning, so we took him into the clinic at Duke on Friday.  They went ahead admitted him and he’s been there over the weekend to get antibiotics into him.  Everyone thought it was going to be some sort of infection from the Apheresis catheter which might let us have it removed, much to Mommy’s liking, but multiple cultures from it have come back negative, so we’re not exactly sure what the source of the fever is.  I don’t think they’ll remove the catheter unless they can definitively prove that’s the source of the problem, so we’re still in limbo there.  He spiked the fever again last night, so odds are we won’t be going home until Monday at the earliest.  He’s not necessarily in any pain, but he’s just bored sitting in the hospital.  He tested positive for MRSA, which means they have him on isolation orders and he can’t leave his room, so we’re kinda stuck in the room 24 hours a day.  From what they’ve told us, this is somewhat common as many people are walking around with this and would never know it...but it’s definitely no fun for him.

 

We had an appointment scheduled for Friday which he missed where he had to get all the radiation pretreatment setup done, so we did it yesterday instead.  He had to sit with his mask on for a couple hours while they got all the areas lined up and marked off on his body to show exactly where the treatments will take place.  Par for the course, he made it through another grueling session and was back to being a happy little guy as soon as it was done talking about riding the train back to the main hospital.  He definitely had his moments during the course of “photo op”, but he toughed it out like the champ he is.  This was pretty much the last thing he needed to do to be ready for the treatments to start this Wednesday the 12^th.  LeAnn being the master negotiator she is, swung a deal to change his treatment timeslot from late afternoon to 11:15am to give us the ability to get Connor to school on time and still not have to rush to the appointment and then be home in plenty of time to get Connor off the bus in the afternoon.  Needless to say, this will allow us to get back to some normalcy in our daily routine, so praise God for that as well!  We’re praying he won’t have any sickness from the treatments and he can get into the swing of things over the next six weeks.

 

The Lumbar Puncture is coming up on Tuesday, so if we can get an all clear on it this time, it means a lower radiation dose which in turn means lower chances of long term issues.  Needless to say, any and all prayers for this as well would definitely be appreciated.

 

I’ll post again as soon as we have updates.