Day 6 - chemo completed

Just a warning - this could be a long one! : )

Dad completed this round of chemo this morning - alleluia! He's still suffering very few side effects, but we are all expecting that to pick up over the weekend and next week.

Talked to my Mom tonight and she said Dr. Westerfeld came in today (he's their primary doctor for all of this) and he was very positive and pleased with Dad's progress. The blood work shows that Dad's WBCs are down to .1 - which is pretty much nothing. The fact that he was at 40 last Friday and is already so down is a great sign that the "blasts" are responding to the chemo and responding well.

Apparently, the biopsy from a week ago came back and when Dad was re-admitted last Friday, his blasts were 40% of his bone marrow composition - which is not good. The only comparison you can make is that when we started all this, his first bone marrow biopsy in February showed his blasts were at 87%, so although the leukemia had returned last week, they caught it well before it had reached the stage we started at.

The doctor thought Dad wouldn't need another biopsy until he got home in a month or so. Dad told him that his goal is to be home for Memorial Day. The doctor said that might be very optimistic. Does this guy even know my Dad? If he has anything to say about it, he'll be home.

I asked Mom tonight about the bone marrow transplant and what that will do for us in truth. She explained that right now, the type of leukemia Dad has becomes increasingly resistant to the chemo and therefore chemo becomes obsolete as a treatment regimen the more you use it. The donor cells from the transplant will hopefully graft and fight off the leukemia cells that are resistant to the chemo and reproduce healthy cells. This could buy us years. I was happy to hear that, of course, since I didn't really know before this and didn't want to really ask either. We're all banking on this working.

So, the plan for now, is get through this recovery period from the chemo and go home for a week. Then Dad will come back in, re-do chemo, but a different kind, then go straight into transplant. This will be early to mid-June probably.

For now, we're grateful for today. It's funny but I used to be thankful for so many things - extravagant things, now I wake up thankful to be just opening my eyes to see another day. That's it. The basics.

When life hands you chaos, we all fall into survival mode and that means simplify. That would be why I just signed my kid up for swim team, the twins and Lydia up for swim lessons, am juggling two softball schedules and practices, dance classes, an upcoming recital, and school winding down - I've simplified alright! NOT! Well, maybe that part of my life isn't so simple, but my prayer certainly is - Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Keep the faith, keep up your thoughts and prayers for my family, and most of all take care of you.