New Numbers June 2, 2011

After a boring day of watching recorded night time soaps to kill time, when I should have been sorting and packing, the timer went off on the stove to tell me it was time to pick Riley up from school. I wanted to grab him ten minutes early to beat it out of the high school parking lot before the mob of students clogged the area when school officially let out. I also wanted to get to Dornbeckers a little early so Riley could do his blood draw and get the results back. Last time we were hanging out until five because we just missed a batch being set up at the lab. The lab does them in groupings about a half hour apart if not longer. So if your timing is off or you are late then you have to wait longer for your results towards the end of the day.

Riley's appointments these days are as late as possible so he misses the minimum amount of school. When he was in the phase where he might be getting a transfusion, the appointment started at 10:00 am and could last all day until rush hour if they had to order blood. We are long past that phase now. Its just a quick stop at the lab for them to prick Riley for a small vial of blood, then off to the clinic to wait for the results and talk to the doctor.

Today's numbers
145,000 platelets, down from 178,000 last time in April, but he had just recovered from a cold the week before which can cause a bump in platelets helping the body recover. 134,000 was two weeks before that, so it looks like the numbers are still going up.

Whites were 4.3, which is great. A normal person has 5 when he is not sick then it bumps up to 10 when you catch a cold. Riley has been reaching 5 when he is sick. Now he is not sick and almost has a normal number. Whites don't last long, less than a day. Its good to see an almost normal number.

Hemoglobin was 11.8, again a pretty decent number. And all the young cells neutrophils lymphocytes and monocytes were all showing improvement from last time. Neutrophils were 2.5. It is incremental progress yet progress none the less.

A very dear friend has a child going through what we went through over a year ago. My kids have played were her children. We had our children grow up in the same area. I asked the doctor if there could be a connection. He told me in 2005 there was a cluster study done on the Kalama catch basin, inquiring if there was any toxin that might be causing an abnormal amount of children to be catching this rare disease. The results were inconclusive. I am going to look up the study. It will be available from the SW Washington Health Department. Tom would probably enjoy reading it. I will let him summarize it for me. He really got into studying the disease when Riley first got sick. Ordering all sorts of Medical Journal reports about Aplastic Anemia off the Internet. He became quite competent on the subject. He could really grill the doctor in his own medical language each time we visited.

Tom was working today so it was just Riley and me. Tom laughed when I called him later, and said the Doctor probably enjoyed the break of not getting grilled for once.

Riley will be decreasing his dosage again. From 100 milligrams morning and again at night, he will do 100 in the morning and 75 at night then in three weeks go to 75 and 75. I ordered 25 milligram pills last time so we would be ready. Originally the doctor said he would be decreasing the dosages at a 10 to 15% rate. We have been a little more aggressive. This will be a 25% decrease.

Next visit is July 14 at 1:00pm. School will be out so we can do the middle of the day and avoid the commute. We hit rush hour heading home each time when we leave the hospital at 5:00pm.

Riley wanted KFC for dinner. I can usually be convinced to do fast food on doctor visit day. I just want to put my feet up and type afterwards, let everyone know the results and keep the record up to date if we need to refresh our memories in the future. We had stopped at Starbucks in the lobby of the hospital already between the blood draw and the appointment because we had time to kill. We were still 40 minutes early for meeting the doctor. Riley had ordered a mocha frapaccino with Carmel. I had to remind him decaf, and a blueberry Muffin to go with it. I told him he would probably like strawberry frappaccino better, but he wanted to try the mocha with Carmel. I think it was the Carmel that intrigued him. He finished most of it but gave me the last quarter of the glass. It was good, but I think he liked the strawberry flavor we had last time better.

I told him on the elevator ride up to the doctor's office that cancer likes to feed on sugar. It was just a hint that he might want to try eating more healthy. So we get to the nurses station for check in and weigh in, and he tells her I told him that sugar causes cancer. That is not what I said at all. She looked at me as if I was an idiot. I only wanted to encourage him to eat some vegetables once in a while, as I explained to the nurse.

Riley weighed in at 138 pounds and 5 foot 10 inches tall. Growing well. His best friend though is now 6 foot 3 inches, so Riley definitely has some catching up to do.

So feeding Riley, who is so skinny, is always encouraged. If he wanted KFC or fast food for the second night in a row (last night was DQ to celebrate Trevor's band performance) then KFC it would be. I can feed us all for well under $20 and cooking is so not what I like to do, especially after stressful meetings, even good stressful meetings. Everyone enjoyed the food. I didn't have to hear any complaints about my food or that someone didn't like what was being served which is the usual result of my cooking.

I did make Trevor do his homework. Riley took a shower after dinner to wash away the day. He is good about showering every night. He then made a batch of brownies for everyone. Trevor made himself a juice smoothie once his homework was done and got his book and some bubble bath for a long soak in my bathroom tub. He needs to bath regularly also, and if a long soak gets him to bath, well, then that is what he gets.

The sun is setting out the window. I love the late sunsets. The recent rains have made the air smell clean and fresh, full of spring hope. The light is hitting the clouds giving them that fake painted look, all pink and frothy against a neon bright blue sky. No fights tonight. Everyone was agreeable about doing what they were supposed to be doing. Peace and bliss reign. Its usually that way after take out dinner on hospital visit nights. No one wants to ruin the moment of good news, not even Trevor and me over his homework. I just hope he remembers to hand it in tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the last day to bring grades up to be included in the not failing field trip to the movies the teachers are offering next week as incentive. I wont think about that now. That is Trevor's choice. He did so well last night, other than forgetting one of the instruments for his part. I can only smile though, because that is so Trevor, and the news is good, Riley is improving. Enjoy the not raining at the moment sunset.