The Calm Before the Storm

When someone in your family has cancer, you have to enjoy the (relatively) good days, because bad days are sure to follow. We have been enjoying a good couple of days. Other than being extremely fatigued, Tim has felt a little more like his old self lately. He even hooked up his computer and downloaded his email. He is trying to get his gmail account to send mail directly to his phone, rather than getting lost in the mass of work email. Once he gets this working, I will let you know.

Brendan taught Tim and I to play rock band last night. I'd like to boast a bit and say that I was better at drums than Tim was. Tim will tell you that it's the chemo brain. I also think that actually having training on drums is a disadvantage. You have to connect the eye and hand and disconnect the ear, in my opinion. Since Tim's eyesight has been negatively affected by the chemo, this really doesn't help.

Theo got his very own phone for New Year's. So he's joined the texting generation. He's also started going out with his friends to the mall and to movies. I guess we should get used to living with a teenager in our house. He's even started to sleep like a teenage boy. I think I made him get out of bed at 10am the other day.

Tomorrow we start the consolidation round of arsenic. We are seeing fewer leukemia cells in his blood, so we hope that things are working. His platelet count is up, which is good. His hemoglobin count is low, hence the fatigue, but it is stable. Unfortunately, his white count is very low and the doctor doesn't know why. So Tim has to stay away from people, fresh fruit and flowers.

Tim's siblings (and aunt) have graciously volunteered to come out for a week or two at a time to provide us with help through the beginning of February. I am very grateful for the assistance. Knowing that there's someone at home for the boys no matter how long the hospital takes is a great stress reliever for me.

We will continue to enjoy this respite for however long it lasts. Hopefully, whenever the low comes, it won't be too bad. Tim is worried about the cornea transplant he had last summer. He said that the vision in that eye is quite bad. So we will be contacting the opthamalogist tomorrow. That is our biggest cloud at the moment. That and knowing that twenty five days of arsenic and two weeks of ATRA start again tomorrow. Soldiering on...