Round 5 and He's Hungry!

Tyler said at our doctors' appointments today that, for the first time since the radiation started, he was hungry! It is such a relief that the nausea has faded again and his body has adjusted to the new regimen. He has been eating like crazy today to catch up to what he missed over the last week, so I am feeling much better.

We also got a new transplant schedule today from the folks at SCCA. Tyler's transplant is now scheduled for 11/25, two days before Thanksgiving. Hopefully his lumbar puncture on October 27th will show a leukemia-free CSF and we can proceed with this schedule. If not, we will likely be delayed another 14 days while he suffers through an additional round of chemo.

Assuming the best case scenario, Tyler is now 41.67% done with his radiation treatments. For those of you that wonder about our compulsive need to post numbers every time, rest assured... Tyler is the one that does all of these calculations. I'm always in awe of his mathematical abilities (and I'm a math major from college) because he consistently leaves me in the dust.

Andrea and I got our flu shots today, so that we can take care of Tyler and put him at less risk for illness this fall. I've never had a flu shot before, because I don't really believe the theory that you can accurately predict which strain of illness will be popular 9 months in the future. But... I am a loving wife, so I suffered through this year. The poke actually wasn't that bad and the mail today indicates that my insurance company will reimburse me for that cost.

Tyler can always tell when he is getting low on red blood cells and that proved true again today. He told me yesterday that he expected to need a transfusion and, sure enough, his Hematocrit has dropped to 23%. He's pushed his transfusion off until tomorrow (so he could steal a few hours of golf with Gump today) and will likely be moving around with an extra spring in his step by tomorrow night. The only remaining concern was that he dropped from 27% HCT on Monday to 23% today. That's a steep drop, but not unexplained with the radiation treatments.

His WBC count today was the lowest we have ever seen at .93. The normal range is 4.8-10.0, or something like that. We were happy to see that his blast count was all of the way down at .02%, so I am hopeful that is indicative of positive CSF results in a week and a half.

I think that is most of the exciting news from today. Thanks for the e-mails and comments for the blog! We are touched to hear that people are thinking of us and offering to help. Friends and family make this battle a much easier thing to bear.