Mac & I did a quick trip to St. Jude Thursday and returned Friday after his appointment. It was nice to see all of our hematology team and catch up. They are all so excited that we were home for the month!! All his numbers were up and his chemistries were good (we always pay special attention to his creatinine, BUN, magnesium, potassium). His hemoglobin made it to the low 9's!!! It needs to get above 11, but since he hung out in the 7's and 8's for so long (he gets transfused at 7) it was good to see 9. His platelets moved up a bit more and his ANC was 9600. We are now starting the decrease in the shot. We expect to see his ANC drop as a result, but hopefully the hemoglobin and platelets won't be affected. We'll check his counts again in 2 weeks here in NO, and then go back to Memphis in a month.

He's doing fine otherwise. Just to give you some perspective, when we got to NO Children's Hospital last July, his hemoglobin was 4, his platelets were 7000 (normal is above 150,000), and his ANC was 300. And he'd been to tennis, a friend's house, and was at soccer practice when I got the call from our pediatrician. Kids are amazing! We keep telling him he's gonna feel like superman when his counts get up to normal! He's already beginning to run around and play more as he builds up his stamina.

Thanks for reading! Please keep your fingers crossed and your prayers coming! It obviously takes a while for the bone marrow to recover. It's hard to continue to "wait and watch" but it's all we can do. And we're happy to be doing this from home and thankful we're not in the middle of a BMT right now! That's the miracle of it all.