Day 15

Written Friday, March 9th:

Day 15 of treatment was much less involved. JP did not have to go in fasting - thank goodness - and he was at least a little bit friendly with the nurses. His numbers didn't change much: Platelets at 20,000 and ANC still 0.1. He did another round of the chemotherapy called Vincristine and we think the steroids are finally kicking in. He's started gaining weight! Between the Wednesday visit and the Friday visit, JP gained a pound and a half! He's got a serious appetite for cheeseburgers and fries. He's also started associating a visit to Primary Children's with a cheeseburger and he did not appreciate that our clinic on Friday was not long enough for him to be able to order one. Every time a nurse would walk in and ask if there was anything we needed, JP would put his hand on his forehead, act exasperated, and whine, "Mine cheeseburger!" Of course we made him one as soon as we got home and he was thrilled. He's still pretty big on rolls and fries (yep, even in the middle of the night) and has even started asking for some of his go-to foods again. Friday morning for breakfast he ate mac & cheese. What a weird craving to have first thing in the morning! We're happy to oblige most of the time and we love that his cheeks are rounding out and you can't see the outline of his ribs anymore. Our boy is getting some serious caloric intake!

Josh told him that he could ask for basically anything at this point and we won't tell him no. It's semi-true, how could we say no to our son who has leukemia for goodness sakes? That would just be bad parenting. As long as we're catering to his every desire he's a pretty happy camper. The truth is that he is relatively happy most of the time. When he doesn't get what he wants in the instant that he wants it, however, the anger steps in and he becomes unreasonable. "NO!" is by far the word most frequently used by JP, but I'm not sure how much of that is him being on steroids vs. him being a two-year old. I think the frequency in that he uses it is the two year old part of him and the gusto with which he yells it is coming from the meds. Who knows.

Here are some cute pictures from our week:

Elsie met Dr. Gemmell for the first time since she caught her during delivery...

Elsie and Josh enjoying some snuggle time

JP loungin' out... Notice one sock on and one sock off? He gets it from Josh and it makes me crazy. It's adorable, but maddening.

Me and my cute kids

JP sure loves our Elsie girl!

JP was super happy to be done with chemo!

And today we broke into the church to play some basketball. JP was a big fan of the idea, not so much of actually carrying-out-the-plan.