Cancer Update: Routine Visit

Charlie had his monthly chemo visit today. When he goes in on a "routine" day, he sees his doctor, or nurse practitioner for a check up. They ask about how he has been feeling, acting and handling the meds. They are always concerned about any bruising, due to low platelets, rashes, or anything that we may have noticed in the past four weeks. Charlie's primary nurse will then come in and access his medi-port. She will take a blood sample and then hook him up to the iv bag for his vincristine. The process is usually very fast, under 20 mins, the port is deaccessed and he gets to go home. Later the nurse calls us with the results of his full blood work up. He is getting better and better about having his port accessed on routine days. When we go in and he doesn't feel well the port access is borderline torture for him and everyone involved.
Today the nurse informed us that his ANC was over 3000. This is not a good thing. While in maintenance his ANC should be between 750-1500. The higher it is means one of two things: 1. the chemo he takes nightly isn't a therapeutic enough dose (aka, he needs more) or 2. He has an infection. We are betting that Charlie has another viral infection at this point. Daniel has a fever, cough and runny nose that started Sunday, so chances are Charlie will have a fever in the next day or two. That means another trip back up for blood counts. The doctor however is concerned about option 1 because his counts for the last few months have been 1600+, 1800+ and now 3000+. So she has instructed us to increase his 6MP pill from one tablet every night to 1.5 tablets every M/W/F and 1 tablet on T/TH. The first week after his chemo visit the pill box is so confusing! Chad sets alarms on his phone to make sure we remember that it is time to drug him up ;)

Red Rocks Hike with J.P.

Red Rocks Hike with JP

This past Saturday, Charlie, Daniel and Dad met up with Tyler and JP at Red Rocks Park do some hiking. Daniel rode the whole way facing out from his Baby Bjorn and Charlie walked or ran the whole way. . . almost. After Charlie got warmed up, he and JP had a great time running ahead, hiding and jumping out to surprise us. Daniel thought that was good fun. We stopped after a while and had snacks by a water tower(?). It was some metal structure that Charlie thought was a rocket ship. In a cute moment, I was talking to Tyler and JP asked how I knew his dad's name. I said, "I know his name because we're friends". JP replied, "And soon we'll be family."

After snacks, we started up again and Charlie had a bad run in with a bush. He literaly ran right into to it, falling down a little hill in the process. When he cried out, I saw him laying face up in the middle of this huge prickly bush. He was okay, but soon after he began to poop out asking to ride on my shoulders for a bit. So there we were, Dad with Daniel hanging in front and Charlie sitting on top. Needless to say, I got a good workout. Charlie finished up the hike strong and was rewarded with more snacks and drinks back at the car.

When we got home it was nap time and believe it or not, dad joined in that as well.

Planting the Garden

Garden 2011

Charlie and Mom got around to planting the garden yesterday. We went to Nick's Garden center and bought vegetable starts this year instead of trying our hand at seeds. Part of Charlie's Make a Wish day included the volunteer team building a 16' x 11' raised bed garden! Charlie has been very excited about planing vegetables. Hopefully in 70-120 days we will have a nice crop of broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, seedless cucumbers, brussels sprouts, pumpkins, yellow corn, serrano chilies, jalapeno peppers and some other pepper Chad picked out in hopes of salsa making. We will try to post pictures of the garden in progress this summer. Although I am afraid I may need to have a few tree branches trimmed back to allow for more sunlight in the area. We'll see...

Make a wish news coverage

Here are the two short segments that aired on 4/29 about Charlie's Wish

Videos of Daniel on the move

Daniel has reached the age where all he wants to do is move. The videos below show how proficient he has become at crawling. He loves the tunnel we received from friends up in Greeley, CO. Nana brought over a walking toy and Daniel has taken a step or two, but it is not hie preferred mode of movement.

The direct link to the videos are below, or you can click our YouTube channel at the left column in the blog.

Meet the New Baby

Baby Hooper will make an appearance at the end of November. Just in time for the holidays!