Day 38 - First Clinic Visit

Ryan didn't really want pictures today...
We had our first clinic visit today.  Patrick and Ryan got to meet the outpatient (long term) doctors and nurses that will be taking care of him for the next 8-10 months.  (of course, I missed it, since I am back home in Great Falls).  Patrick said it went great and he really enjoyed meeting everyone!  The doctors said that Ryan is recovering amazingly from the Induction Phase, and they are totally impressed with him.  We will start the 'Consolidation Phase' tomorrow with the spinal tap, and more chemo, so I will restart my blog title days with Day 1.  This phase should last about 8 weeks, or 56 days.

They gave him some compression socks for the swelling in his legs.  The overall thought it that the swelling is a side effect of one of his chemo drugs.  It tends to hit the liver, which in turn, can no longer produce enough albumin, which leads to fluid moving to places where it shouldn't.  They also decreased his fluid intake for the next few days, to see if that also helps.  Ryan said the socks felt really good and he looks much better to me!

The doctors also explained the 'fever' issue.  They expect that some of the meds will cause him to have a fever.  However, we still need to bring him in for cultures, just in case.  They said the plan, in case of a fever, is to call the fellow, bring him into the ER (assuming it's after hours, which is almost always is), draw cultures and labs, and if his ANC is high enough, send him back home on Tylenol.  It's a little strange for us, but also makes it much less painful.  And, it helps to know that the fevers are normal, and not something we did wrong.

Grandma and Grandpa made it out there this afternoon, which made everyone pretty happy.  And, since his ANC was over 3000, they even went out to dinner, in a restaurant!  Ryan was a little pooped at the end of the day, but all is going well!  We have our Spinal Tap scheduled for tomorrow morning (in Interventional Radiology, they are taking no chances this time).  Otherwise, nothing else is scheduled.  We hope for a nice calm day!

Thank you all for your good thoughts and prayers...


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ANC - 3800 (totally normal!)
Platelets - 80
Hemacrit - 26.7
Hemoglobin - 9.0
RBC - 3.01
WBC - 5.0
Creatine - 0.2
Bilirubin (total) - 1.2
ALT - 87

Comments

  1. The grandparents are there --- that will make that young man happy. you can see it in all three faces! and the ANC is up, what an amazing young man! and they got to go OUT to dinner, bet he was tired after all that!! Prayers are working, again :) see what the next chapter in that treatment brings. LUV U all

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