day 15

Today was Day 15 of Ethan's treatment. His sedation for his bone marrow biopsy went well, despite a long morning of not being able to eat, with a pretty intense craving for cottage cheese. In fact, the first thing Ethan said when he woke up from his sedation was "Where's my cottage cheese?" It was pretty precious. :)

We learned a couple of things today. First of all, after being admitted last night they started Ethan on some IV antibiotics as a precautionary measure in case he has any kind of bacterial infection, which we won't know officially until his blood cultures come back in 48 hours or so. At the same time his blood counts remain low and he is neutropenic, which is very normal because of the treatment. Today we learned that combining all of these factors together --- the fever symptoms he had, his low immunity, in addition to being in the first month of his treatment --- we will now likely be staying in the hospital for a while until his blood counts recover and he is no longer neutropenic. He will remain on the antibiotics most likely until this happens as well, as a precautionary measure since his body does not have the ability to fight infections. This is all very normal but it has made me so incredibly thankful that we were able to go home last week, even though it only lasted for a short while.

The preliminary bone marrow results from today's biopsy also came back very positive, showing a lot less blasts then last week, which is AWESOME! This is great news indeed. Again, the big goal of induction therapy (first month) is to have his cancer in remission by Day 29 which is in 2 weeks on February 25th. Please continue to pray that this would be so.

Some prayer requests:
-Complete healing from the cancer in his body and that he would achieve remission by February 25th.
-For his blood counts to continue to improve so that he is no longer neutropenic.
-For sweet Eloise to feel loved and taken care of as we get back into the mode of caring for Ethan at the hospital and Eloise at home.