Phinduction Round 3 and a Photo Essay

Dustin here. Let's get it, Phin phans. 

Medical Updates

Phin is back in the hospital for Round 3, an intensification of his previous chemotherapy inductions. Like before, he'll be hospitalized for four to six weeks while he receives the chemo and his white blood cell and platelet counts bottom out and then gradually climb back up, but this time, instead of getting chemo every 12 hours for 10 days or 8 days, he's only getting it for 5 days, and the doses are stronger. That means he has to be monitored more closely, which means he'll have to be hooked up to stuff more frequently and his movement will be limited. It also means he'll be receiving anti-nausea medicine and corticosteroid eye drops (which he really hates) every six hours. 

We're already going into Day 3 of this. So far, he's been more listless than normal, and occasionally he's a little nauseous. His appetite is also pretty much gone. He's making the best of it, though. Getting punched with chemo and rolling with it.     

Phin on the Daily

The first part of this break from the hospital had to be spent away from home, since one of his sisters brought home the flu before school let out for summer. We fled to his grandparents' empty house (they happened to be away that week), and found plenty of wildlife and places to explore nearby.

The nine-banded armadillo has evolved an armor-like covering to help protect it from predators. However, nothing in this animal's evolutionary history could have prepared it for Phin, descending suddenly from the sky with an aggressive offer of friendship.  

Despite how it appears, this tunnel doesn't lead to heaven. It empties onto a golf course near Phin's grandparents' house. And unlike traditional depictions of the people one meets in heaven, the individuals one meets upon exiting the tunnel and entering the golf course are far from friendly and welcoming. They declare that they're trying to play golf here, as if that isn't obvious by their clothes and their golf clubs. 
"We're trying to play golf here," they say. 
They say this while standing next to a sign that reads "Shared Path: Golf Carts, Bicycles, & Pedestrians." 
That's how you know it isn't heaven. 

Twenty-four hours after Phin and I got word that everyone back home was fever-free, we packed up, doing our best to restore my in-laws' place to its pre-bachelor pad condition before we left. Phin received a dance party to celebrate his homecoming shortly after he arrived at our place.  

Even masked, Phin's oldest sister's face says it all. 

One-sided water balloon fights in the back yard occurred almost daily. A direct hit on Phin would mean a trip back to the hospital for a dressing change on his central line's site. I felt like even this was living kind of dangerously, but then, I was the one standing with him on the dock with the alligators looking up at us a couple days before. That's the tricky part about these trips home with severely immunocompromised, can't-get-wet Phin. Everywhere we look, we see the lines that separate fun and dangerous, and he wants to tiptoe right up to them all.  

It feels like we're developing a playbook for Phin's times away from the hospital. Since the firepit s'mores were a hit last time he was home, that activity got repeated.  

Once again, we asked Phin to list things he wanted to do while he was between his chemo rounds. That list included exploring a cave with bats (probably not a good idea at this juncture) and visiting Africa and "the Mounty Rockins" (both too far, sadly, but hilarious that he calls the Rocky Mountains that), and camping. Camping we thought we could probably do, assuming we were close enough to home that we could return if things went sideways. About 25 feet was close enough to home.  

Only the neighborhood barred owls were awake to bear witness to Neesha as she rode a gradually deflating air mattress to the ground outside our home over the course of many hours both endless and dark.    

This birthday boy didn't let a little ol' spinal tap and bone marrow biopsy stop the party! He was glad he got to hook up his hospital fam with some alligator-themed cupcakes on his special day.

Even if Phin lives to see a hundred birthdays, I doubt he will ever see anything like what happened on his 5th, when a crowd of people under the direction of #TeamPhin organizer-in-chief Betty Riner gathered in front of our house to cheer and sing "Happy Birthday" to him. Phin's classmates, neighbors, his sisters' dance colleagues, many new friends, and a few friends Neesha and I hadn't seen in years--so many people came. They had signs. Balloons. Flowers. It was amazing, humbling, and somewhat dizzying as these friends and loved ones flipped a little boy's birthday that leukemia might have turned into one of his worst ever into an event that no other birthday will ever be able to match.  

Of course, it wouldn't be a break from hospitalization for Phin without a visit to Oatland Island Wildlife Center. Even with the raincoat he borrowed from his sister (since apparently he outgrew his during all of this cancer stuff), the storm halted our advance at the cougar enclosure and forced us to retreat. Still, for Phin, any visit to Oatland is a good one, even one that gets cut short.  

Neesha talked about these two "birthday buddies" in her last entry, They got to spend some time together outside one evening to celebrate their day, a few days after the fact. 

Now Phin has returned to the care of his team at the Children's Hospital, where the fight continues with renewed intensity. It could be, however, that Phin has crossed the halfway marker. According to the plan of attack laid out by his oncologists in accordance with the trial in which he is enrolled, Phin is scheduled to complete four rounds of induction and count recovery. He has now completed two and has begun Round 3.    

Here's something I'm putting in not because it's Phin-related, but just because it's so weird. It was shot by Phin's sisters the morning that he returned to the hospital. This is just a clip from a much longer interview. In it, Phin's sister Obi throws a tough question at a triceratops and things get awkward. Note to aspiring broadcasters everywhere: When interviewing dinosaurs, refrain from asking what happened to their friends.