Another round

After a longer than planned wait (not complaining), we are back in the hospital for another round of chemo. Ethan's counts stayed low for a while, which is typical of him, and we had to wait an extra week to get his bone marrow tested. After a few days of anxious waiting, we found that 1% of his cells are still leukemia cells. We are getting close! The doctor did say that it is still likely that he will need to do even one more round after this one to get him completely into remission so that we can do the bone marrow transplant.

For this round, we are inpatient for 5-6 days. Then we will go home for about 3 weeks, barring a fever or illness, and then be admitted again for another 3-4 days for some more chemo. After that, we will wait for counts to come up so that we can do another bone marrow aspirate and see where we stand.

Ethan has been happy and has a lot of energy.  I am continually amazed at his patience and happy attitude. As long as we are honest with him, and tell him what is going on, he generally doesn't complain. He just does what he has to do and is a trooper about it. He is such an example to me of taking what life gives you and making the most of it. My favorite moment of the day is when we were headed out of his hospital room to pick out a toy, and he passed his nurse, and so casually (and out of the blue) said "I have a little bit of cancer" and just kept walking. It was so cute! We all got a laugh, and the nurse assured him that we were going to get that out of him!

We have been so blessed throughout this experience, and again and again I am amazed at the love and generosity that people show our family. This would definitely be a much more trying experience without those around us and our Heavenly Father and Savior lightening our load!