Neutrophils Please Go Up!
by Erin Gourley Neutrophils Please Go Up!
On Sunday, August 2nd, Lucas was at Dells and about to start his 3rd night of chemo. His fever was still spiking and his WBC were jumping in the wrong direction going up from 150K to 170K. I turned to the doctor whose honesty I always appreciated and said ‘he will live right?’. She answered ‘I’ll be able to breathe when his counts go down’. I gasped and almost fell apart. I had put out the prayer request for his numbers to go down that night before. A miracle happened and that Sunday night at midnight his counts were down to 98K. By 7am they were at 71K. The doctor came in and literally did a dance in Lucas’s room. I found out that day that on Sunday the nuns held a mass in Boston for Lucas. People around the world had prayed hard for his counts to come down. They did it worked.
Well, here we are day 27 and we need his good cells-the neutrophils to go up. He stopped chemo on day 10. We wait anxiously every morning for his counts and every morning they are zero. We need them to go up to 200 as soon as possible. Apparently, when they come in they are like navy seals and start attacking the bad cells. He has a pneumonia (possibly fungal) in his chest which explains the fevers last week. It’s still there and he is on the fungal and bacterial meds to combat this infection since he has no immunity.
Once we can get Lucas to 200 ‘ANC’s’ (the neutrophil count), the doctors can go do the procedure to assess his bone marrow. God willing it will be clean meaning no FLT3 or RunEx1 tumor cells in his marrow. If clean, they begin round 2 of the chemo (there are 5 total). If it’s not clean he will undergo round 2 of chemo and then need a bone marrow transplant. I pray it’s clean.
There was a study (1831) done of 1098 patients with AML and because it’s more serious it’s more stubborn to get the neutrophils up. The average day to go up was day 25. We’re past that so we’re anxiously awaiting for them to skyrocket.
I pray for another miracle. Please share the message like you all did on August 1st if you would be so kind.
We pray for:
1) Those neutrophils to get kicking up to 200
2) That he has a clean bone marrow with no tumor cells anywhere in there.
3) The pneumonia to go away
Gratitudes:
We are so grateful for your prayers and for Lucas not having a fever the past week and no new infections.
We thank you for all of your random acts of kindness. Everyone who continues to support us and the kids with care taking (thanks to Anne and Matt this week), meals, wristbands (Andrea amazing), the doctors and nurses at MD Anderson, Lucas’s coaches who continue to bring the team spirit to him, the Hairmen, Laurel and Jennifer for helping to coordinate the furniture in Houston, your contributions, Kathy, Betsy, Kris, Karen and Jen’s and Shelly for being team captains to support all of these logistics, Signae for meditating for Lucas to give him strength, Marita who continues to open her home to us and even repaired Nana’s cross for me and just to all of you for being our rocks. And a special amazing thanks to the moms who are praying for Lucas despite them being in battle with their children undergoing treatment for Leukemia. We’re trying to stay strong but we get scared so thank you for all of your prayers and support which means EVERYTHING to us.
