Extra Skinny Super Snarly

Tate’s March chemotherapy went as good as can be expected. Greg took him to the Friday appointment for counts and COVID. Everything except his weight looks pretty good! His ANC is 940, and thankfully he didn’t have anything painful or odd to talk to his doctor about. The nurses gave him two boxes of Girl Scout cookies to help fatten him up. One of the HEM/ONC patients is a Girl Scout, and when cookie time came around she asked people to consider buying boxes to be donated to Phoenix Children’s Hospital. There were lots and lots of cookies given to patients at the East Valley clinic.

Tate has had a more difficult time recovering from chemo days the last couple months. For two years straight we knew he would wake up feeling better 8 days after his monthly chemotherapy appointments, but lately it has taken a few more days for him to feel better. This time he said he was angrier, in more pain, and somehow not hungry at all. I don’t know if it’s taking him longer to recover because his body is beaten down from so much treatment or because he’s so skinny or what. I just don’t know.

After some discussion, Tate agreed to add appetite stimulants back into his daily meds until he can pack on some weight. Is it something we could force? Yes, of course. But as the parents of a young adult that has experienced so much beyond his control, we try to show him as much respect as possible and make him an active advocate for his own health. Greg has been preparing some gorgeous meals for him, his Aunt Sara sent all the snacks available on Amazon Fresh, and his Spicy Grandma will bring him all the Barro’s pizza he can eat. But his body is confused and he’s not hungry.

Knock on wood, Tate has six treatments left with only two of them being Lumbar Punctures. I am experiencing a growing happiness deep inside that’s starting to come out. It’s a little scary to give way to the possibility that good things have been happening since the day Tate was diagnosed to get him to this point and I just couldn’t see it. All the bad days, all the chemotherapy, all that time in the hospital – they weren’t for nothing. They were to give our son a second chance at life.