Clinic Visit

We are back from Charlottesville!  Overall the visit went well, even though the scale said that David had lost 3 pounds?!  The doctors were not concerned about it, so we will not be either:) Dr. Alisanski (our primary doctor) was "thrilled" with his progress and thought he looked well.  When your oncologist is happy then you are happy! 

Next week will be a busy clinic visit.  We will start at 10:30 in the radiology department where David will have a repeat CT scan to on his lungs, kidney, and abdomen to make sure that no new lesions have developed.  Clearly scans will always make us nervous, but we are trusting God.  The next stop will be in clinic for his weekly Vinchristine chemo which will just be a push in his IV.  Then we will have an EKG and echocardiogram to make sure that his heart is still handling all this chemo okay. 

Depite the good clinic visit today, it was kind of heartbreaking to see that David is associating clinic with a port access and that he is now reluctant to get out of the car:( We had a little drama with getting his port accessed today, but after that it went okay.  It is so hard to have to hold him down for getting his port in and then taken out.  Despite the fact that we do it weekly, it never gets easier for me or Dave. 

The great news is that his counts are bottoming out now like they should be.  I am looking at keeping up the nightly G shots for another 7 days or so, until they can get back in the normal range.  He is already suffering with some back pain that is associated with that, but a heating pad typically works well.  We take it everywhere with us!  We pray that his counts will rebound as they should and that his chemo can stay on schedule.  Today was tretment #11  out of 31.  Despite the fact we are still facing 20 more treatments, we are thrilled that the big surgery is behind us, all the abdomen and lung radiation is done, and we have already successful navigated our first bacterial infection. Little victories!

The other exciting news is that we got the green light for some fun this weekend!!  Kyle is in a swim meet in Lynchburg this weekend, so Saturday morning we will leave here as a FAMILY and head to Lynchburg.  David and I will travel on to Charlottesville for the dance marathon.  There is a dance marathon Saturday from noon until midnight to raise money for the UVA pediatric cancer clinic.  Fraternities and Sororities dance all day to raise money.  From  noon until 2 there will be family friendly activities and we are excited to go to UVA for a fun reason.  All of David's doctors will be there as well as the clinic staff.  The video that David made will be shown during the marathon as well.  We heard today at clinic that the doctors did a dancing video that will be shown as well.  I think it will be a fun afternoon.  We will then head back to Lynchburg and cheer Kyle on Sunday in his events before heading home.  I am not looking forward to packing another weekend bag, but it will be so much fun to head out for some weekend fun:) We pray that David is up to all the fun this weekend.

Thanks for your prayers today to help us through another clinic visit.  We are thrilled to check another visit off of our protocol list!