Prayers Still Required

The great thing about holidays falling on a Monday is that you get an extra day off before heading back in for chemo! 

We had an excellent Memorial Day Weekend, celebrating with friends from all over!  Jimmy Jordan and his boys were here from Atlanta and the Johnson Family came all the way up from Southern Ohio to say hi.  Not to mention getting to watch Quinn march in his final parade of Jr. High Band and spending Monday with my family, including my favorite uncle, Jeff.  Johnny even went carp shooting with Pooh and suffered only minor injuries.

Overall the switch from the CPT-11/FUDR protocol back to the Folfox protocol with 5-FU has been a piece of cake.  The CPT-11 protocol made him sick for 13.5 out of the 14 day cycle.  It was horrible and he looked and felt terrible.  He even told me that he thought he looked bad when he saw a picture of himself. 

Today was the second cycle back on the Folfox/5-FU protocol and things went relatively well.  Relatively.  We have some issues with Johnny's blood counts.  Everything is creeping into the crapper with his CBC (Complete Blood Count for the non-medicals out there).  We aren't at the critical stage that would require transfusion yet, but we need to see a turnaround pretty soon.

As a matter of FYI, here are his current CBC values with normal ranges in parentheses:

• WBC  2.71   (4.0-11.0)
• RBC  3.76    (3.9-5.9)
• HEMOGLOBIN   11.4   (13-17.3)
• HEMATOCRIT   33.8   (39-53)
• PLATELETS   115   (130-470)

In other lab news, his liver labs and others look pretty good:

• GLUCOSE   97  (64-105)
• BUN   10   (8-23)
• CREATININE   0.66   (0.70-1.5)  A little low.
• SODIUM   139   (134-145)
• POTASSIUM   3.5   (3.6-5.2)  A little low.
• ALK PHOS  139   (38-137)  Liver lab  --  just a tad high, nothing to worry about.
• SGOT   25   (0-40)   Liver lab  --  Yeah!
• SGPT   24   (8-45)   Liver lab --  Yeah!

Because of his low blood counts, they didn't hook Johnny up to the 46-hour pump that he normally just LOVES to carry around.  I feel bad that he isn't getting the full amount of chemo, but also hope that this means he gets to have another couple of good weeks before the next round.  It should give his labs time to rebound a little bit.  That is our hope, anyway.

We are sooooo looking forward to Friday and the kids being out of school.  It makes it so much easier when we aren't dealing with school issues right along with everything else.  I need a break, and I know the boys do, too.

We have quite a few things in the works for this summer, and I'll fill in the details with all of that later.  Just wanted to check in with you and let you know that things are going fine here on Harrah Road (ok, not perfect, but fine nonetheless).

By the way, I am sooooooo very far behind on writing my thank you notes.  Please know that I am working on them and I owe many, many, many people a thank you! 

Please continue the prayers . . .