CBC - 11/02/03

I fell asleep last night when putting Max to bed and forgot to update the blog. :)

His nurses visit went fairly well, though he hasn't really gotten used to getting accessed through the portacath and wanted her to take blood from his arm. But, I think he will get used to it fairly soon. It is much faster and easier than the old way to draw blood. His counts were pretty good. No need to transfuse right now, though they want us to come to the clinic on Monday to check him out, and expect to transfuse platelets then.

Platelets: 81
Hematocrit: 35
Hemoglobin: 12.0
WBC: 10.1
ANC: 700

Things are pretty good. Max is definitely moody and hyper from the steriods, which is difficult for us. Imagine all that lovely three year old behavior; tantrums, sudden mood swings, crying over the tiniest things, etc., multiplied about 10 times. Then, imagine a child who literally can not stop moving. He has kind of been beating on us physically because he is bouncing off the walls. That actually makes things sound a lot worse than they are, though. He is generally happy. We have been playing outside a lot to burn off that extra energy, and he is doing better than expected. His body is going through platelets slower than they thought it would (they expected transfusions every 3-5 days and he has needed them more like every 7-8), his red count has been holding fairly steadily, and his white count is actually up, thanks primarily to the steriods. So, we are pretty happy with things.

Playing outside has been very important. He hasn't been napping much, but if we run around outside, he is more likely to nap. There also are less sharp corners outside, so I am a bit more relaxed. We went to the Cranberry bogs on Wed and met another family and picked cranberries and he had a ton of fun. Yesterday, we just ran around in the backyard. Thank goodness it only rained in the morning. I will take them to the park today, I think. The change of scene is good for me, too.