The belly is growing . . .

We have had some requests for some pics of Shannon prego so here we go. Here is one. We are 33 weeks on Friday. We got Ian's room painted last week blue (of course) and it looks really good. Carpets were cleaned today, so crib consturction should start tomorrow. Mommy is nesting big time so Daddy's got to get to work!

Ian Gregory at 30 weeks

We went and had a 4D Sonogram done at the OB office. It was fun to see what Ian is going to look like. We think that he probably looks more like Shannon. He definitely doesn't have the cheeks that Landry has (or Daddy)!

Ian Gregory 4D 30 weeks

Good news from the oncologist

The results of a follow-up bone marrow biopsy were received this morning. It looks like the first round of chemotherapy resulted in a total remission of the cancer cells. Even at the molecular level all things look to be back to normal. The oncologist said this was as good of a result as we could hope for!

Dad will go in starting tomorrow for 3 days of further chemotherapy but with only one of the drugs from the cocktail. It will be done outpatient (which is a relief). This will probable be one of a couple more rounds but they should be less intense given the state of the cancer at this point.

Thanks for all your continued prayers!

Meterologist?

Wow. Our computer hardrive burned up a couple of weeks ago and we are just now getting back connected. I have some catching up to do. That will be a weekend project.

Last night we were having dinner and Landry was telling me about the rain and thunder she heard today. I asked her how thunder was made, and she told me very matter of factly, "The clouds bang together and make a loud noise". I am not sure where she got this. But I repsonded, "Very good Landry . . . Are you going to be a meterologist?" "No, I'm a girl" , she answered.

Finally Home

Dad finally got to go home on Tuesday morning! His blood counts were sufficiently up to let him go home. He is still pretty tired but looks good overall. They will probably give him a couple of weeks off before starting the next round of treatment.

An excellent wekeend

After a rough week most of last week, by the weekend Dad was visibly felling better. Finally, his blood counts started to come up as well! As of this morning, the doctor was very happy with his response, so much so, that he was taken off of the IV antibiotics and switched to an oral antibiotic.

All of his counts were up, WBC and platelets were back up to normal, and the red counts (still low) but are trending up all weekend.

What does all this mean? Dad may get to go home in the next few days! They want to watch him for a couple of more days on this new antibiotic and make sure that no infections pop back up. But a light at the tunnel.

We know there are a couple of more rounds of treatment to come, but the thought of at least getting to go home after a full 4 weeks in the hospital sounds pretty good right now!

Slow battle back up the hill

These last few days have been fairly rough. Dad's blood counts hit bottom this weekend. That is part of the plan of chemo, but it obviously makes him very prone to infection as well. It also calls several infusions to keep the blood count up. He had had 3 infusions as of yesterday. One thing he was in need of late was platelets. He had a nose bleed that just would not stop over the weekend. Most people are CMV positive and Dad is CMV negative, so it took a little while to track down some platelets.

They have also started started him on a drug (newgen?) to start rebuilding the white blood counts. It is a daily injection that is fairly painful and one of the side effects is bone pain.

In the meantime, he started having some serious pain in his right toe (the opposite leg as the other infection). It looks now like it may be gaut caused by the guild up in uric acid in his system. The added a new regiment of drugs to try and fight that.

He fought a low grade fever all weekend while the docs pumped him full of antibiotics all weekend to to try wane off any infections. He got through most of the weekend ok, but spiked a high fever last night and they running some new blood tests to see if they can determine an unseen infection. They are also changing the regiment of antibiotics up to try and fight this stuff off.

On the good news side, his blood counts have gone up (slightly) over the past two days. We are hoping that maybe this means he is turning a corner. If we can keep the infections at bay here for a few more days and give the white blood counts time to recover, he may get through this first round and get to go home in a couple of weeks.

Got through the weekend

Well we made it through the weekend. It turned out that a nurse forgot to change out a IV bag at some point during the weekend, so Dad had to tack 12 more hours onto the end of the treatment so he finished up at about 11 p.m. last night.

It was kind of tough weekend. He had a lot more nausea from the drugs, and got sick a few times. They gave him some Phenergan to fight the nausea, but that basically knocked him out. Apparently, it stops nausea by completely shutting down your whole body. He said that even his mouth was numb. They could also give Zofran for that type of reaction, but the Oncologist said it would react to some of the other drugs he is on. So they cut the dosage in half and trying it again.

The drugs have seemed to help. He was feeling alot stronger yesterday. We know this is the tough week, because the chemo drugs will basically drop his white blood count (and everything else) no nothing. But hopefully, he can start the road to recovery next week.

One drug down, one to go

Dad is starting Day 5 of his chemo, which means the end of one of his drugs. Still has three more days to go on the second drug. Overall he is still feeling fairly good. He has some nausea and has completely lost his appetite. But the docs gave him some meds to help the nausea (which made him pretty sleepy) and he feels a lot better.

Blood work was still about the same, which as the doctor put it "Boring is good". We should start seeing the effects of the chemo over the next week as the cells get killed off.

Polo Shirts

I guess with summer here, I have been wearing a lot of polo shirts lately. Everytime I wear one Landry points at the Polo symbol on the chest and gets excited and says "Polo, Daddy".

Yesterday, I was wearing some other sort of shirt, with no symbol on it, and she had a very distraught look on her face ans asked me "Where'd Polo go?".