Thankful in the Face of Adversity

The fight presses onward. The pneumonia has finally been kicked and Adam is looking forward to his last chemo session, which begins on Monday march 30. Hopefully this will be the end of the chemo and then he will move on to the radiation treatments.

As we look back to the last 5 months we can be extremely thankful for a lot of things. One, that the doctors found this early enough so that it can be treated aggressively , and secondly that Adam has not really had a lot of sickness while going through chemo. Many patients suffer extreme nausea and vomiting with many other symptoms and chemo effects. Adam, overall has not had a lot of that. Yes, he has lost his hair, and some weight, but those things can and are already coming back.

I know one thing for certain, that this kid has strength that I never realized that he had. He has more strength than his ole dad that's for sure. He has shown great strength, faith and persistence and yes, even patience in this. It is not over, but I know that regardless of how ever long his battle may be, he will make it through this.

That Pesky Litttle Bug!

Adam just can not seem to kick the pneumonia. Even though he feels great and is running no fever the doctors said that the pesky little bug is still there. This along with the histoplasmosis is not a good thing, so they have pushed back his last chemo treatment and added another, stronger antibiotic to hit the pneumonia and the histo.

He is not real happy about that, but we have to do what has to be done. So the bug just won't go away. That reminds me of that song in grade school..."the cat came back the very next day....the cat came back and wouldn't go away"

Other than that he seems to be doing great, he has good color and his activity level is up somewhat. Of course he continues to tire easily and his mother is complaining that he is not resting well, which is probably the case, but overall he is doing very good. His hair is even starting to come back in. It looks like peach fuzz all over his head, but it's a start.

Another Clinic, Another Drug, Another Transfusion

Today Adam had clinic and everything went well. His blood work looked good, however the ANC was still somewhat elevated, which means that the Histoplasmosis is active and working his system, so they prescribed another drug today to start attacking this virus.

His hemoglobin is also slowly dropping from 13 down to 9 today , so to counteract that they are going to schedule him to come back in tomorrow for another transfusion. The chemo is taking its toll on him, and his blood counts are showing it, even if he is not.

Adam knows that he is at the end of his chemo to say that he is happy about it is an understatement. Soon the constant weakness and nausea may soon be over, or replaced by other symptoms as the radiation begins shortly after his last chemo session. But at least the light at the end of the tunnel is now much closer than it was in November.

Histo What?

The preliminary results are in from all of Adam's scans last monday, and overall it was good news. The masses and tumors have shrunk somewhat, as to the amount they are unable to give us an estimate due to some other things and infections going on in his lungs. Apparently he has early stages of pneumonia and are treating him with some pretty strong antibiotic (Zetromiacin), and hopefully this will clear up within a couple more days or at least by the time he is dismissed from the hospital on Saturday evening.

The other situation "clouding" his scans is something called Histoplasmosis, which we have heard reference to early on in his diagnosis. Histoplasmosis is very common in our area of the country and probably 80% of the population have some form of it, however it is not commonly active. Apparently due to the chemotherapy and due to Adam's decreased immune system, the histoplasmosis has become active. Unfortunately they can not treat this while he is undergoing chemo as one of the chemo drugs and the medicine used to treat the Histo react "volatile" together, so once he is finished with this round of chemo they will treat the histo.

Overall he is doing well, just really sleepy again this time with the chemo. I think it is due to the drugs of course. He has also stated for one of the very few times since his fight with Hodgkin's, that he doesn't feel very good. This is to be expected, but he very rarely will say anything if he is feeling bad. But if all these things are going on inside of him, it is very understandable as to why he is not feeling very well.

He has one more scheduled chemo session at the end of March and then he will be scanned and tested again prior to his radiation. He has a preliminary schedule set for his "markings" for the radiation in April. So the next step in his fight will be soon upon him.

Scans

Adam went for his scans on March 2. I got a phone call from the doctor who said that the scans showed some shrinkage but at the time of the phone call he didn't have specific numbers for me. When we go in for chemo they should have all the information from the CT, PETT, and x-rays.

We are 2/3 of the finished with chemo, only two more rounds and then radiation. Adam is starting to get excited about the prospect of being finished. He is doing school work with a homebound tutor now and we are trying to see if he is going to get caught up with his classmates.

We go back to the hospital for a chemo admit this week. I can say that I'm very thankful to be living this close (one hour) to the hospital. Some people that we've met have traveled a very long distance to come to this hospital.

Adam is doing well overall. He has an infection somewhere and is on antibiotics. I'm just glad that this didn't put off his chemo and he didn't have to go into the hospital for IV antibiotics. I will log back on and give an update about his scans after we get more information.