Alex received round 3 last Friday. His AGC (aka ANC-measures the bacteria fighting cells in the blood) was down to 164, but they give vincristine no matter what the count since it doesn't really affect blood counts. A "normal" AGC is over 3000, the danger zone starts at under 1000 and 500 is really prone to infection.
Alex spiked a fever on me around 2 that afternoon, so after a call to the oncology clinic we were off for the ER. His count was up a little in the ER, but still under 500 so he was admitted. Talking to the doctor on Saturday the criteria for being released was no fever and his AGC starting to recover. His count Saturday morning was 50. Sunday's count was 990 (I think it was an error in reading the smear), but he had had a fever early that morning, so we were stuck. Numbers were back down Monday and finally came up Tuesday. The roughest part is that lil man was on a 5 foot tether more or less in terms of IV tubing and kept getting tangled. I did talk the attending into letting him off fluids during the day Monday and that made life easier.
Our stroller was a lifesaver. We'd load Alex up and take off for rides around the floor. I even took him down to my office one evening while he slept in the stroller and got an hour's worth of work done.
Robert was recently accepted into the Engineer in Training program at work. He missed the first two days of his new rotation at work, but they moved stuff around and basically left him where he'd been before so he could have a full week in a new location next week. Thankfully both of our jobs have been working with us as much as possible during this rough time.
We're back home, thank goodness. Robert is at work today and I'm working from the house. Alex has been playing all morning.
We know we'll have a surgery at some point, so I plan on taking the computer with me next time so we can keep folks updated better.
Terri
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