Saturday, March 24, 2007

Calling Mulder and Scully

Blood is a complicated thing. It carries more than oxygen -- white cells, red cells, platelets. And, when you apply the complex math of the medical world, something called "Absolute Neutrofil Count" or "ANC". This handy number is what determines whether or not Vampboy can play with his friends, or whether he needs to live in a figurative bubble to shield him from nasty bugs.

Normally, when a cancer patient receives chemotherapy, their ANC drops down into the depths. Then, with the help of a daily shot called GCSF, the count slowly rises back to normal.

Remember, I said "normally". For the second time in Vampboy's treatment, his ANC has dropped when it shouldn't -- at the end of his cycle, even when he's still taking his GCSF. To be clear, this isn't supposed to happen. So, we are once again scratching our heads saying, "what the hell". What doesn't help is that the Doctors tend to say the same thing on this one.

So Vampboy is delayed in his treatment while we wait for something to change, and his counts to rise again. I'm not sure how long that will take, but it'll probably be Friday at the earliest (he was supposed to start his next chemo round this past Friday). At least, we hope it will be Friday.

More mystery....

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry to hear that he can't start his next round yet...but I have to say that it was awesome to see him interacting again today with his friends.
It was so nice to see all three of you today!
~Miss Beth

Lainey-Paney said...

Hang in there VampBoy!

And VampBoy's Blood: listen up. You better straighten up & act right! VampBoy's tired of your misbehavior!!!

(gosh, that's all I got...so I hope it does the trick...)

Anonymous said...

Having been there for one of the delays I know how frustrated you two must be right now. It's hard enough to get a schedule put together in terms of time and care, but to keep having these setbacks...ugh. Hang in there-hopefully things will continue to go well otherwise.

-Pete the 'manny' ; )