Today, I went home for a few hours to pick up a few things. It is October tomorrow, after all, and I needed to bring a little Halloween into the hospital room. When I left, Caemon was sleeping. We had had an active night with fevers and lots of restlessness, so his mid-morning nap was a welcome (and long) one. He received blood and platelets today as he slept, and by the time I got back this evening, our boy was actually a bit perky.
He isn’t eating much the last few days. The chemo is starting to create mouth sores, which makes food a little harder to deal with. They’re managing this and other pain, though, and I even got him to eat a whole container of yogurt. It doesn’t hurt that I stopped at our favorite store for maple flavorted cream-top yogurt on the way back to the hospital. I can’t tell you how happy I was to see our boy animated again. He was delighted to have a bit of Halloween here, to have some of his favorite flavors too, and he enjoyed the various treats I brought him–from more comfy pants to new videos to photos of his favorite appliances from home. He smile and even laughed. It was such a nice evening.
Tonight, he is resting pretty quietly, and while he could presumably spike a fever again (they really do think it’s a side effect of one of the chemo drugs), he doesn’t seem to be in that place now, and I’m so, so grateful. Already, the chemo seems to be working on his swollen lymph nodes, adenoids, and tonsils. It’s bringing his counts down beautifully, and he’s responding just as we should. Because the nurses here are very accustomed to dealing with AML, this new round of therapies is something they can discuss with us from a place of quite a bit of expertise. They have seen it work very well in AML patients, and this, along with our boy’s response, is giving us some hope this week.
(Ugh, but just like that, the nurse came in, took his temperature, and he’s up above 103 again. We’re on it, but still…I could use a break from the excitement.)
C is for Crocodile 