Go West, Young Man

When I asked the doctor today, after Benjamin's spinal tap and bone marrow biopsy, when the next course of chemo would start he gave me two options: today, or go home and come back in on Friday. So guess where we are.

Benjamin is sleeping in his crib for the first time in a month, and for the next two days we're going to try to be as normal a family as possible. Benjamin is doing his part - less than an hour after arriving home he had already broken in our new granite by trying to rub bread into it where ever he could reach, and was trying to climb the stairs on his little chicken legs.

For those who want the technical details, his nutriphils are just above 600, which means well enough to get some freedom (>500) but not yet at ideal chemo minimum (>1000). His bone marrow looks very good, in that there are way less than 5% blast cells in the sample. This means that Benjamin is classified as low risk for recurrence. Of course, the real test is going to be after the 2nd course of chemo, but these results are very reassuring none-the-less. In fact the doctor told us how impressed he was at how fast Benjamin has recovered from the first course of chemo. They were conservatively looking at Labor Day to start the next course, but that's our little Boy Wonder for you.

So we're going to take a break from hospital life and all its little joys (vital signs at 10 PM and 6AM), and also from the blog. We'll let you all know how Benjamin handles chemo when he's not sedated, and where in 8D we've been resettled. We'll attach pictures of Benjamin outside the hospital walls as well.