Briefly … Again ...

Am aware I haven't updated in some time. Have thought about it a few times, but not had sufficient impetus to actually follow through and compose an update. First things first, Adam is doing quite well at the moment. Which isn't to say everything is rosy and plain sailing. All things are relative, and never more so than when your child has Cancer. Tomorrow will be the twentieth consecutive day that he'll have had his abscess/surgical wound repacked and redressed. Aquacel twirled and pushed as deep as possible into the cavity with the aid of plastic forceps isn't anybody's idea of fun. The purpose by the way, as I didn't have a clue until I was told, is for the wound to drain completely and heal from the inside out. Today was the first time he's managed it without the aid of Entonox. It is healing, and even to my very untrained eyes it looks so much better than it did even this time last week. And he's so much more comfortable too, even able to sit up properly when he feels so inclined.

He's also up and about more these days, definitely more mobile, and willingly so. Eating has improved tremendously in the last week; he's still way down on where he was before in terms of weight, but these past few days we've actually started to go back up a little. Only time will tell how far we can get until something crops up to set him back again, as that's been the recurring problem of the last 3+ months. At the moment though we're just taking things one day at a time and enjoying seeing a little bit of the old Adam coming back; funny, cheeky, and generally abusive (in a good natured way) towards his Dad. He's been spending a fair amount of time on XBox Live with his partner in crime Ryan, and that's always good to see too.

On another positive note Adam hasn't experienced any pain at all since returning home just before Christmas. His blood counts are weak though, a combination of the amount of disease in his bone marrow, the effects of a long history of treatment, and the continuous therapy he's on now. His neutrophil count had been holding steady at around 2 over the past fortnight, almost certainly as his body attempted to ward off infections around the open wound on his bottom. However, on Monday it fell very low to just 0.3, and so we've started GCSF injections to try and stimulate his body to keep producing those white blood cells.

On Sunday Alison and Adam head back to Grand Rapids to see Dr Sholler, undergo bone marrow biopsies and get a PET/CT scan done. The results of these will determine where we go next in terms of treatment, and whether or not Adam is in for another lengthy stay in the U.S. Our fingers are crossed, but we take nothing for granted. He's looking and feeling better and that in itself is great … but it doesn't actually mean anything in respect of what next weeks investigations might show.