Round #1, Day +11 Update

Slow and Steady

It has been a long week for Noah and he and Kim and I have felt much love and prayer and support since I was last able to post. Looking back over the last five days, I can confidently say that Sunday was a low point in not only this round of chemo but in this journey though Noah's cancer treatments.

An update, however, is overdue.

Late Sunday evening, I received work from Kim that Noah had finally found some rest. This can all be credited to her tears, the frustration and doggedness of the nurses and the pain team finally putting together a drug cocktail that actually began to put a damper on the levels of pain Noah was experiencing. He is now on at least four different pain killers and they are making Noah's pain bearable and by this I mean that they are allowing him to sleep for a few hours at a time.

Noah is still dealing with a particularly nasty case of mucositis. He has terrible diarrhea and he is coughing up lots of mucous. He does not experience the same waves of pain during his bowel movements but the coughing and spitting up is still very hard on him.

Thankfully, though, we are starting to see things move in the right direction.

Noah's white blood counts started to slowly progress this week. They were at measured at 0.02 on Sunday and bumped up to 0.05 on Monday. From there, everyday, that number nearly doubled. Today, he is at 1.08.

Better still, for the first time since his transplant, Noah has a measurable neutrophil count. These are the white blood cells that do the healing and, we pray, Noah's healing will start in earnest very soon.

There are signs that this is beginning. Last night, his heart rate began to dip. Hopefully, what this indicates, is that the pain meds - many of which can slow down the heartrate - are starting to do more work than they need to as Noah's heartrate isn't heightened all the time by his pain. What we could be seeing is a waning of constant pain. If this is the case, Noah can start being weaned off of these drugs.

The biggest signs, of course, are being seen in Noah's changing behavior. By Wednesday, Noah was starting to ask to play. This is huge. When Noah - and all little people - want to do nothing more than sleep and watch TV it means that they are pretty sick. Still confined to his bed, we spent time being bossed around by Noah while moving pieces around a Candy Land board or rolling clay into balls so that he can load them into his noisy new dump truck. It doesn't last long but it is beginning to last longer.

Yesterday there was another sweet little signpost along the road to recovery. Noah, for the first time in two weeks, fell asleep with his thumb in his mouth. Things are not feeling quite as ouchie.

There is still a ways to go here but, because things are going in the right direction, we are starting to feel more hopeful about Noah getting better and, eventually, getting Noah back home.

Some hurdles still need to be overcome. Noah needs to get off of his pain medications before he can really leave his room. As well, he has not received feeds or eaten any food for about a week and he needs to be able to get off of the TPN before he can go anywhere. And there are some potential complications that could come up as his counts go up. We still take things one day at a time.

But we are thankful and blessed. Thankful that Noah is starting to heal and blessed that we can be there to help him. Thankful as well for the prayers and encouragements we have received from so many people and blessed that we get to be held by this wonderful community of faith and support.