We’re on day 19 of induction 2. Noah’s ANC has been at zero for 7 days now. This is about the time I started getting concerned last go-around, but have a much different mindset at this point.
First, we’ve seen his ANC hang at zero before and it eventually went up. Last round it actually took over 30 days to start inching up which was…stressful. If that happens again, so be it, but there are signs that it might come earlier.
We saw some of these same “precursors to ANC coming up” last time too that maybe gave us a bit of false hope: a couple monocytes here, an eosinophil there, a nightly slight rise in temperature (99.5). But each morning we’d get up and ANC was still stuck at zero. And all throughout that time, Noah “looked” pretty good. Again this time, he looks good. He’s a little bit chubby because he’s been eating a lot. He drinks and pees like a racehorse. He does some workouts that are beyond what I ever expected a kid 10 days off chemo would be doing.
But, more notably, he received a red blood cell transfusion last Sunday morning and platelets the next morning. The red blood cell transfusion took him from 6.5 (always transfused <= 7) to 9.7. That dropped about 0.3 each day since, except for today it held at 8.6. It’s possible that continues to hold. The platelet transfusion took him from 16 (always transfused <= 20) to 61. Within two days that dropped to 32 and we assumed the next night would be a transfusion. But it wasn’t; it was 35. And the next night it was 38. Today it was up to 59. We’ll see, but it sure looks like that one is producing on its own.
So now we wait. Regardless of whether he recovers quickly or slowly, he’ll again have a spinal tap and MRD (measurable residual disease) test on or just after day 28 to see what remains. At the moment, things are good and we celebrate the good times.
A few other notes:
Noah received the Student of the Month award for his elementary school this week. This was presented during a school board meeting and the principal FaceTimed Noah in and shared some very kind words. All of his former teachers also wrote about him in a document delivered with the award and it all meant a lot. We’re just really thankful for this school and such a caring staff.
You’ll also note the picture below where Noah is NOT wearing a stocking cap. I probably pushed him too much early on to embrace the baldness. It was going to happen naturally anyway as he got used to it. I’m not sure he’s fully stoked about it yet, but I can promise he would not have agreed to this picture a month ago.
I’m going to sign off since it’s 11pm and I think my screen is keeping him awake! We love you all and over and out.
