Saturday, August 22, 2009

Hello to All - We hope you are enjoying your weekend. I think we plan on resting and relaxing as much as possible with a 3 year old...I do believe our car is on autopilot with the drive to Duke. We ended up going up the night before and we had Addi with us this time. We pretty much let her choose if she wants to come with us our not, and this time she did, well at least after she woke up from her nap and changed her mind.
Enough rambling. They perform an ultrasound on Bo's neck and both legs. This took about 1.5 hours to do, needless to say Addi and I went and played at the children's hospital. Visiting there helps to put everything into perspective and we are so blessed to have a healthy child.
The results came back that Bo does have blood clots. This isn't an uncommon problem when people are going through chemo, it just stinks to add another thing on Bo's plate. We never knew how fortunate we were with Bo cycle of chemos before, he didn't really have any of these complications, but with the transplant we are hitting a few more bumps. So Bo will now take twice a day injections of his medicine to thin his blood. At a minimum he will do this probably for 6 months, potentially for life. We are setting up an appointment with the coagulation doctors, chalk up another department we are visiting on the World O Bo and they will run the ship with these medicines. So this weekend we are resting, Bo is feeling a little yuck from chemo, so I might take Addi out of the house to swim, but always stay close by in case we are needed.
Thanks for the prayers and hopefully soon we will get all this "fun" under control. We are still holding onto the good news that he cancer is considerably less and we hope and pray that it will continue to do so.
Love to All
Christi, Bo and Addi
PS I like to think that the blood is clotting because it is carrying away the cancer and disposing properly...

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Seriously, here comes the next wave. We received a call last night from Susan, Dr. Crawford's Assistant and I believe the first words out of my mouth was, "Susan when your name popped up on the phone, I just threw up in my mouth. Can't we get 24 hours of pure happiness." With that being said, she didn't like that seeing her name made us feel that way, but immediately I thought, "It can't be that bad, Dr. Crawford would call us personally if it was."
Enough jabbering, they called to let us know that the radiology report (this is why we wait for the report before we get to excited. Someone remind us next time in case we forget.) did see the cancer regressing in the liver and the bones. (I do think I failed to mention that when we did chemo we did an intravenous drug to help stimulate bone growth and help in the healing and fighting cancer there as well) But there are two spots they believe the be blood clots that they would like to ultrasound. There is a chance these will turn out to be nothing, but on the flip side if they are, then we need to take care of asap. One is in his lung and the more concerning one is in his interior jugular. Scary, we know where the jugular leads and this is the one they want to ultrasound immediately. That location isn't common, and probably not good. All this stems down to another trip to Duke tomorrow for the ultrasound and then determining our treatment plan if it turns out to be something we need to take care of immediately. They are unsure what might of caused these, but again our doctors are great and Dr. Crawford, Susan and Dr. Palmer are working together for the best course of treatment and getting us in as quickly as possible.
Thank for all the support and never a dull moment with Bo.
Love to All
Christi, Bo and Addi

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Hello to All - Finally a point for Team BO! Bo had a scan today that showed the chemo, Altima, is shrinking the tumors on his liver. The doctors also believe that his bones are trying to heal themselves as well. So today we did another round of chemo and added an additional medicine to help with his bone growth. The bone growth might make Bo feel achy, but will hopefully help with the healing. So yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Crawford did let us know that Altima has just been approved as a maintenance drug and treatment plan. What that means for us is that we will not count this chemo in cycles or how many times we will do it. There will be no number limit, we will stop when this is too much for Bo to handle or when/dare I say if the cancer comes back. Then obviously it isn't working anymore. This type of chemo is different than the "typical" chemos people take. Bo should keep his hair and hopefully as the cancer keeps leaving his body he will get stronger and so therefore there will be less and less side effects.
We are being cautiously optimistic, taking today to be happy. But we do realize reality. But one day daring to "Dream Big" hopefully won't hurt.
Love to All
Christi, Bo and Sweet Addi
PS I made the parental decision to make sure Addi's first car is an Altima!

Monday, August 17, 2009

Okay we stink...so sorry. Bo has been doing so well, one full week at work with just a late start, I was afraid to post anything to jinx him. With that being said, I thought it would be a grand ol' time to get the stomach flu. For some reason I always get these things anymore, I wonder if it pertains to the stress in my life. I always to try "act" stress free, I guess my immune system knows otherwise. At least it was just a 24 hour sickness with another 48 being puny (another is that a word)
As I mentioned Bo is doing well, so we are hopefully optimistic that tomorrow will bring good news. We start off bright and early with scans and then the doctor around lunchtime and hopefully chemo. Sad when you are hoping for chemo, but it just might mean it is working. We will post when we hear anything. Thanks for the thoughts and prayers.
Love to All
Christi, Bo and Addi
PS - I have been stressing to Bo lately that we are not going to let the doctors convince us he is sick because of what his scans might say. He is feeling better and that is what matters most. Positive thinking will triumph, with a few prayers.