Phincoming

Medical Updates
Phin's been in an after-chemo phase called "count recovery" or "hematological recovery" where we play a waiting game for specific types of blood cells to return to normal ranges. 

During Phin's first round of chemo (aka "induction chemo," which lasted ten days), he received cytarabine twice a day, which kills rapidly dividing cells–like cancerous ones–but also healthy cells, depleting his healthy stuff (platelets, neutrophils, white blood cells, hemoglobin...etc.) and leaving him vulnerable to everything.

(I'm pretty sure Dustin covered some of that in an earlier post.) 

Each morning around 5 a.m., my phone alerts me to his most recent blood test results posting from blood samples. I check them and watch his platelets climb a little here, his hemoglobin holding fast there. Each decimal of a number (a part of math I truly hated as a younger student) offering a similar decimal of hope that one day soon, he could come home and we could be together. Each morning, I relish that his healthy cells are recovering and will continue to recover. 

But not far behind, the cancer cells will try to recover, as well.

So, it's kind of a race for enough of Phin's healthy cells to recover in order to make him strong enough to withstand another round of chemo before the cancer cells have a chance to start producing again. 

Hence, he only gets one week at home, as long as all goes well. 

Phin on the daily
The Internet connection here at the hospital is flickering, my laptop is dying, and I'm scrambling to pack all the things that Phin, Dustin, and I have been using here for the last month. We were thrilled to learn that on the 4-6 weeks of this first inpatient round, Phin needed to spend closer to 4 weeks than 6. Dustin was also thrilled to be mistaken that it's not 10 days of chemo and then 4-6 weeks of recovery, but 4-6 weeks that includes 10 days of chemo at the start. But, still, the news caught us a bit off guard. We were expecting to bring Phin home in mid- to late-May, and it's looking instead like it will happen in late April, as in, today.  

And we’re exhausted from this last month, but Phin's energy is up, up, up thanks to his blood numbers coming back up a little. But apart from all that, I just want to say that he's such a different kid than he was even a month ago. When he was admitted in late March, he was scared, fatigued, defensive, and totally averse to talking to anyone other than his parents. Now, he's talking to the nurses, walking down the hall to hang out with them, articulating what he needs, using words like "vitals" and "syringe," and recognizing numbers in increments of 50 from 100-500 mL. 

And in the morning, for a whole week, if all goes according to plan, our boy is coming home.