It took 3 injections of TPA and 3 return visits, but the clot in Tom's line cleared finally on Monday! Apparently, if a clot doesn't clear after the first 2 injections, it normally won't clear on the 3rd attempt. But they still tried, just in case. Success, at last! I guess it's good sometimes not to be normal?
In between the return trips to the hospital every 24 hours - where we saw more nurses who remembered us from last year - we had a relaxing weekend. You know, I'm not sure whether to take that as a compliment, that we haven't been here in more than a year, and the staff still remember us. Hmmm. I hope it means we are memorable in a good way.
We have visited regularly at Aunt Eileen's and Uncle Bernie's (and been fed very well there too, I might add!). Tom and his cousins Amy, Steven and David have played through many levels of Super Mario Bros on the Wii. Since it seemed we were likely going to be in wait mode the bulk of the coming week, Mike went home on Sunday. We'd like to save his vacation time for later on. He and Laura will travel back together at the beginning of next week.
Tom is supposed to rest as much as possible this week, to continue gathering strength. He still has some post-chemo nausea most mornings, but then by the afternoon and evening, his meatatarian tendencies come back to life. I am told that we must visit Peter's Drive-in for the ultimate hamburger experience in Calgary, so we will certainly make an effort to do so this week!
Tom and I dined on Monday evening with Bev and Suzanne - and enjoyed lots of laughs together. Bev also passed on a combined gift from the building where my employer organization and several other close affiliates are housed - which just floors me because I feel that they have already been incredibly kind and generous to us! I just shake my head at the karmic debt we are accumulating... boy, are we going to have a lifetime of paying it forward after all the kindness that has been shown to us! I hope people know how much we appreciate it, it's quite overwhelming when we stop and reflect on it.
We went back to the hospital today for Tom to have an echocardiogram and EKG. They decided that the ones he last had in Regina (March 23) weren't recent enough for their purposes. We then met with the docs, to discuss where we're at now: the good news is that Ithe MRI and PET scans continue to show that the tumors have responded very well to chemo, and there are no new metastases. Whew! We are redoing the kidney function test, and the lung function test, and both will be complete by late day tomorrow.
The team will meet internally and review all the results one final time. Then they will meet with Tom and I on Friday and go over the proposed plan. It seems quite likely from the conversation we had today that they will ease back on the strength of the chemo for the final consolidation phase to accommodate some of Tom's lower scores/physical capabilities. The trick is to cut back on it without eliminating its effectiveness - they are considering administering the chemo at only 75% strength, but that has not yet been finalized.
At the end of the day it is still up to us and to Tom to give the final consents. Although Thomas is not yet legal age, he certainly has a say in all this - it won't go well if he's not fully on board! If everything lines up correctly, Tom would be admitted this Friday and receive his stem cell transplant on the following Friday, May 29th. But I'm not even going to enter dates on the calendar this time until things seem a little more firm!
Thanks for your continued good wishes and prayers, please keep it up! Hope all is right with you in your world.
Thomas' Mom
