Not Much Change Yet

Johnny is getting chemo right now, and when he finishes this round he will officially be done with day two of this five day run.  It's really hard to tell if he is better or worse.  He doesn't seem to be in as much pain today, but he is definitely weaker than yesterday.  I have to help him sit up, and he is really shaky when he stands.  He is on oxygen all the time now, and he is also still bleeding a lot.  Not like dripping blood, but he has a lot of clotted blood on his lips and in his nose.  They plug up his nose to the point he can't breath so he picks them like boogers.  He pulled one out this morning that was several inches long.  Gross.  They also run down his throat so occasionally he gets nauseous and throws them up.  Even more gross.  The clotting is due to his super high white cell counts.  They are so high that his blood is kind of gelling.  He continues to get platelets and red blood to keep everything going until the chemo can start bringing his counts down.  This is a pretty slow process, but it does seem to be working.  His last few labs showed a slow decrease in white cells, the 5p labs being the first below 200 in a couple of days.  His blast count continues to decrease also which gives us some indication the chemo is working on the cancer.  He has also been spiking fevers every few hours.  He will be normal for a while, and then shoot up to about 103+, then slowly come back down.  I know he's miserable, but he doesn't complain much.  If he bothers to tell us he hurts it means he hurts a lot.  If he says he stomach hurts it means get the bucket now.  This kid is nails.