Alex has had a bit of a break since the last round of heavy duty chemo on January 31st. It usually takes two to three weeks (mostly three) for a patient's white blood cell count to recover before the next batch of treatments begin. Alex of course also had three days in the hospital due to the onset of some incredibly severe pain back on February 6th that was likely caused by the heavy doses of steroids he took as part of the treatment and some pancreatitis. Fortunately the painful part was "only" a few hours long and the next two and half days consisted of sitting around.
We checked Alex's blood last Wednesday but his neutrophil count while having rebounded from basically zero, was too low at 0.50, a count of 0.75 is needed to begin the next stage. Yesterday it was 1.1 (pretty close to normal really, all his counts were very good) and so today he has begun again. Feeling better? Great, let's whack you again!
The last few days have been particularly good. Alex has been quite active, the steroid "blues" are behind us, things have almost been normal.
Today is a big long day. We arrived at quarter to eight this morning and I think we might get out by 6 p.m. tonight. Alex had a lumbar puncture this morning to have methotrexate injected in his spine. That's not as bad as it probably sounds. Actually, the kids kind of like it because the sedative/anaesthetic they get makes them quite loopy!
Following the "LP" Alex had Pentamadine, a drug that prevents a particularly nasty type of pneumonia. This is inhaled through a ventilator over a fifteen to twenty minute period and tastes horrible. He doesn't like it but has to have it every four weeks. (In between he ate a sausage,egg and cheese breakfast sandwich concoction.)
He has been receiving a lot of fluid intravenously to "pre-hydrate" him for the next item on today's menu, good old Cyclophosphamide (old being the operative word, this drug's origins date back to the fifties) which can be quite hard on one's kidneys. The pre-hydration takes two to three hours, the "cyclo" as the nurses call it, takes about 30 minutes to administer, following which he will receive post-hydration for another three or four hours. After that, dessert is a dose of Ara-C, shorthand for a drug called Cytarabine, which is pretty quick to administer.
And then we can go home.
Alex will take another chemotherapy drug called Thioguanine orally every day for the next two weeks.
He comes back tomorrow and the next two days in a row for a shot of Ara-C each day. He has the weekend off and then back Monday for another lumbar puncture, more Ara-C and then three more consecutive days of Ara-C. If that all sounds pretty intense, it is. Eight out of ten days at the hospital. By the time he is finished all that his blood counts will be very, very low.
The great news today was his weight, checking in at 47.8 kilograms. That's an increase of about (a much needed) 5.5 kilos in just a couple of weeks ! The nurses asked him how he did it.
Grinning ear to ear he said, "Doritos!"
