Well…Darn

Today’s appointment took a long time. The clinic is typically very busy on Mondays, and today it seemed extra busy. What happens is that patients that don’t have scheduled appointments develop symptoms over the weekend and need to be seen as soon as possible, so the staff squeezes them all in. Tate has been in that exact situation many times, and we were both happy to wait and grateful he didn’t need care as urgently as some.

When the nurse worked her way to Tate’s room, she was thrilled to see how good he looks. His spirits were high. He was playful. She accessed his port and left us to hang out until the nurse practitioner came back with Tate’s blood work.

Tate’s test results revealed his immune system is nearly depleted. His ANC is only 306! The minimum it should be is 750; normal is 1,000+. We were all really surprised, the Nurse Practitioner included. She instructed us to stop giving him the nightly home chemotherapy. He has an appointment Thursday of next week for more blood work to determine whether he can resume his daily dose of Mercaptopurine and weekly dose of Methotrexate. She said part of being in the Maintenance Phase is learning what doses of the drugs will keep him within range.

Despite the low ANC, Tate was given a 25% dose of Vincristine today and will start a 5-day course of steroids tonight. The steroids will give his ANC an artificial boost, and that’s reason they don’t want to re-test him until late next week. They need him to take the steroids and then let them filter out of his system to get an accurate read.

Tate’s toe is still painful and swollen, and he can’t walk on it. Today’s X-ray shows it is not broken. The doctor wants to do an MRI if he is still unable to walk by his appointment next week. I was glad to hear it wasn’t broken, but Greg, who has had a lifetime of sports injuries, is worried Tate has something worse than a break that could require surgery to fix. I hadn’t considered that and am going to remain hopeful Tate will be back on his feet soon.

We fell back into the habit of being hypervigilant instantly and easily. We did a lot of preparing yesterday before we even knew there was a problem. Unfortunately, the food restrictions are back, as are needing to wear a mask and avoiding busy places.

Greg took all of today’s pictures. Giving credit where credit is due.

Tate is still in good spirits but also feeling really lousy this evening. Vincristine is so hard on him; it drains all the color from his face and energy from his body. We’ll be hanging out at home, cleaning stuff.