Friday, June 3, 2022

Another Delay

This week has been an interesting one. On Tuesday Tony had a scheduled blood draw to check up on his liver numbers. His ALT numbers were 196 last Thursday and should be between 5 and 60. So on Tuesday they did the blood draw and his ALT numbers had come down to 89. Tony's doctors were a lot happier with those numbers but still felt like it would be a good idea for him to go to his ultrasound appointment on Wednesday. The results came back all normal for his ultrasound, but he did have some pain in his stomach area for a few hours on Wednesday. Tony's doctor's decided to go ahead and start chemo Thursday, so we came down for a blood draw and Covid test (you have to do both before they will admit you for chemo). Our appointment was at 12:50 but they didn't take him back for the blood draw until 1:15 or so. His covid test was supposed to be at 1, but they didn't take us back until almost 2. When we got into the room, Tony's blood results posted. So while we were waiting for the nurse, we pulled up his results. His ALT was up to 549, which is near ten times the healthy rate. So when the nurse came in to do the covid test (this is the one where it feels like they're trying to take a sample of your brain while they're in there, so Tony hates these covid tests), we told the nurse we would likely not be staying. So she rushed off to grab one of the doctors and our suspicions were confirmed. They cannot start the chemo while his liver numbers are so high. The issue is, no one can figure out why they are high. The ultrasound didn't really give us any real information. So we were supposed to get a call today from a Hepatologist (liver specialist) to schedule him an appointment. We did not. We left a few messages with Tony's doctors and they said they are still working on it, so hopefully we will have something more solid soon, but we're suspecting that won't be the case since it's the weekend. 
Tony has another blood draw scheduled Monday to check on his liver levels, and hopefully we will have an appointment set with the hepatologist by then. Then his doctors are predicting (for a third week in a row), that he will start his chemo next Thursday. For reference, he was supposed to start his chemo on May 23rd. Now it is tentatively scheduled for June 9th. His blood counts are still holding, so we are hoping this delay just happens to be a happy reprieve instead of a dangerous situation. 

On a cheerier note, I have a funny story. My kids have never been in Utah in May/June. Our next door neighbor here has an enormous cottonwood tree. The twins kept telling me on Wednesday that it was snowing. I knew the temperatures were nowhere near snow temperatures, so I just reminded him it had only rained over the weekend. But he kept saying there were huge snowflakes in the air. Turns out it was just the cottonwood tree dumping copious amounts of cotton. It truly looked like it was snowing. My kids think the "warm snow" is pretty magical. 
Also, the twins graduated Kindergarten yesterday and Jack's last day was today. 

These 2 had the world's best teachers. They truly did everything they could to make it a smooth transition for them moving across the country and switching from homeschool to public school. I shed a lot of worried tears over how things would go for them and words cannot describe how grateful I am for these 2 wonderful ladies. Both Kevin and Cody absolutely loved school and are super excited to come back next year. 



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