Day 60 - July 6, 2012

I don't feel much like blogging tonight. I'm reminding myself that the purpose of this was to keep loved ones informed, to be a bit therapeutic for me, and to maybe help out someone in the same situation someday who may benefit from what I post here. Ryan saw his doctor today. His counts are higher - normal platelets, RBCs better than they've been since we started all this, WBC 4700 (unable to see the differential or kinds of cells present). He got a call from Dr. Zackon late today after the bone marrow results were out. His leukemia is refractory to the chemo he is receiving - meaning that the cancer cells are still going strong. His marrow was 51% lmphoblasts - worse than the 29% after his first 30 days of chemo. The oncologists here will be conferring with the oncologists at Dana Farber to get their input, but they will need to make significant changes in the protocol next week. So we wait. The girls were disappointed on July 4th when there was no fireworks in town - and I promised them that Friday night we'd build a campfire and make s'mores and use the sparklers when it got dark. So I was committed. It was a lovely eveing. Sophia hooked up her iPhone to MeiLin's speakers and she & Ryan danced to Beach Boys and some other music. The girls and neighbor kids flamed some marshmallows and sparklers, I rocked in the hammock, and Tim watched the fireflies in the woods. ---Barb (PS - for some reason even though I'm writing with paragraphs, this all runs together in the blog - sorry!! Does anybody know how to fix that?)