February 26, 2012

We got a smile! And a chuckle!  It is the first time in days we have see our baby smile, much less laugh.  His white counts are on the road to recovery going from 0.2 yesterday (they have been at 0.1or 0.2 all week) to 0.4 today (10 to 15 is normal)!  That brings his ANC to 324.  We're looking for an ANC of 750 to start chemo on Thursday.  Baby steps because his little bone marrow is getting a little bit lazy at this point in treatment. 
The blood cultures are are still negative for infection which is fantastic!  Hoping it stays that way.  We still don't know the cause for the blood in the urine for sure, but the doctors have mentioned the idea of a virus?  They sent some urine to test for a virus a few days ago, but it will be this week before we know anything.  If a virus is the answer, then it would have been caused by the same viruses that get all of us sick everyday.  Essentially, his bladder would have a cold.  Yes, you read that right.  His bladder might have a cold.  Of course there are other theories as well, so if we don't find an answer soon, then when his immune system is better the urologist might sedate him and scope around in his bladder to see what he finds.  We'll see though.
It has been a long, dreary week for all of us and we are hoping it will all be uphill now.  The baby-man was up late last night (when I say late I mean we all went to sleep at 1 a.m. and then I woke up at 3ish to him rubbing on my face...still awake and apparently bored) from there, he preceded to sleep all day.  George and I had to take care of a few things at the house, so after we left at 5:30 this morning and got back about 10:15, we followed Clayton's lead and slept for a few hours too.  Thank you to our mothers for being troopers and coming to the hospital at 5:30 in the morning for us to run home.
We brought back some more things to entertain the baby-man through the week, so here is to hoping for a week with less of this:

and more smiles!

PLEASE READ

People are always asking how they can help and one thing that Clayton needs regularly now and will need plenty of during his stem cell transplant is blood products.  I am going to talk with the Red Cross about setting up a blood drive specifically for donations to Clayton.  That means we need all of you B+ folks out there.  I am hoping that they can do a drive were all blood types are welcome as well for other children to benefit.  It is very unfortunate and not something people think much about, but these kids NEED blood products (blood and platelets) and unfortunately there is often a shortage of them.  I read a story about a little girl who was bleeding from her eyes, nose and ears because her platelets were so low and she had to wait a while on a platelet transfusion because there was a shortage.  Clayton needed platelets when we were in Birmingham and we were also told it would be a while because there was a shortage.  Hopefully, this is something we can arrange soon.  Keep checking back for more information!