5 down, 29 to go...

Anticipated inpatient days for this round, that is, of the dreaded Consolidation Phase.

We surprisingly started "on schedule" yesterday, with Watts' mucositis peaking on day 5 and almost resolving by day 7 (yesterday). He has no diaper rash, some rash around his hickman dressing, and only occasional gagging from the mucositis. He is nursing again but still wont touch table food. All that being said, after checking his CBC (Complete Blood Count) and CMP (Comprehensive Metabolic Panel), we were given the green light to proceed.

We have now finished 16 of the 24 hours of HD MTX. Lord willing, at 4pm, he will have the last High Dose Methotrexate drip into his body and will never, ever need it again. This is the fourth round of the awful drug and I pray that it has done its dirty work. Dr Russell told us yesterday that at this point in treatment, the leukemia cells in Watts' body could be gone. Or they could be down to the thousands, or the hundreds, or even to just one. One leukemia cell, left untreated, can reproduce quickly. So, hypothetically, all of this chemo, all of these hospital days, the next two years that stretch before us, could be for one little bitty leukemia cell that is hiding in a dark corner in Watty's body. Pray, pray, pray that that one lone cell dies.

How are we? I don't know, really. He sustains us daily but this journey is challenging. We are weary of the hospital, of our son being hooked to lines and tubes, of the waiting...always endless waiting. The nights here are also typically sleepless and leave me longing for the sun to rise. And usually, as it does finally peak over the top of Brenner and chases away the shadows outside our window, Michael and I have to apologize to each other for insensitive, frustrated words spoken to each other in the dead of night. Cancer is hard on marriages. I am thankful for mornings filled with new mercies, forgiveness sought and given freely, lots of coffee, and a napping son.

The Lord is good. It may seem strange coming from my lips, as my son fights cancer, but, strange or not, I know His goodness to be true more than ever before.

“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world." 

 ― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

 The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
    and saves the crushed in spirit.

--Psalm 34:18