STEADY

Not much change today -- everything seems pretty stable -- which is good.  Maybe slightly better than yesterday as far as the vomiting goes.  The doctors put him on a rotation of 4 anti nausea drugs scheduled to overlap one another so he will always be covered -- which seems to be doing the trick.

His mouth is a mess-- swollen, bleeding gums -- but when we ask if they hurt, he says no. Which is really hard to believe from the looks of his mouth.  Although with all of the nausea meds, maybe he doesn't notice the pain because he's sleeping most of the day.

The last labs showed a WBC of 15 -- almost a normal number!  I know the doctor's advised me to not get too hung up on the blast count but I can't help it -- it was 86%.  Johnny was due for another LP(lumbar puncture) yesterday but because of his high heart rate and breathing and the sedation used for the procedure, the doctor's decided to wait until the numbers dropped. The leukemia team also discussed the chemo options used for the LP's.  Usually it is either methotrexate or ARA-C but because Johnny is Johnny they don't want to take any chances and are thinking about using both chemos plus a steroid. I'm sure we will find out more during the morning rounds.

Late this evening our friend Jim T. flew in from SFO to hand deliver some stuff he made for Johnny:

Even though Johnny was pretty much out of it for most of Jim's visit, every once in a while he would open his eyes, check out the deck then fall back to sleep.