I clearly have difficulty posting news in a timely manner. Last post involved the long wait for Eli’s MRI. I expected about 3 hours, but it took 3 1/2–poor kid! He had just managed to test ready for his chemo to begin when they took him back for the MRI and by the time he got back to his room, it was almost 9pm and we had to hydrate him again before we could start chemo. At 2:30am he still hadn’t produced the output they wanted, but since they’d given him so much fluid, they decided to start chemo anyway.

Because of the late start, the other meds they give post-chemo to protect the bladder weren’t scheduled to be given until almost 1pm on Tuesday (we started hydration on Monday). Meanwhile, we ended up with too much to do for boredom to set in.

I woke up around 6am and couldn’t go back to sleep so I got on my phone and looked up the MRI results. The MRI of Eli’s pelvis, leg, and foot showed no tumors, but there was scattered edema, likely from radiation. There was one area of concern around a vein, so they scheduled an ultrasound later Tuesday morning.

That didn’t take too long, but it meant revisiting the room in which Eli received his first ultrasound on the day we spent in the ER, which led to his cancer diagnosis. We already knew he had cancer when he had his first MRI and PET scans, so those aren’t really a trigger for me. The ultrasound is. It brought back memories of being told he had cat scratch fever, even though I knew he didn’t. It brought back memories of the long, awful day when our world changed. Happily, the ultrasound results showed nothing nefarious.

Now we wait for the PET scan, which is tomorrow. This will look at his whole body to see if there is anything suspicious looking anywhere else. I am optimistic that everything will look good. Maybe I won’t wait so long to post the results this time 😉.

Today, however, we did labs and his ANC is 0 (that’s bad). His WBC is 1.5 (not good). These numbers tell us about where his immune system is right now. He is at higher risk than usual for infections and illness, with reduced (or no) ability to fight them off. So we get to be extra careful until his counts recover.