We were (kind of) surprised this morning when we got Leo’s blood results: his ANC was down to 190! The rest of his blood counts were great, so we were told that it was linked to his recent viral infection. Mama was getting concerned but apparently there is nothing to worry about: his bone marrow just needs time to recover. We did the procedure today (his lumbar puncture and chemo in the spine) and he got his I.V. chemo but we are holding off the rest of the oral treatment for now. We started the steroids though… it looks like we can’t get away from that one! 🙁

His general anesthesia went very well this morning; he is less scared now, although still pretty apprehensive. It helped to talk to him and have him “practice” the whole deal on his doll “Paul”! He had to wait until noon again though (NPO since last night), but he was very patient, so sweet and we kept busy with all sorts of projects brought from home and given out by clinic’ staff! Every time he goes up to the 6th floor for his procedure, he gets to pick a toy; today he chose very mean looking warriors from some kind of TV show (!) and he also picked something for Charlotte: that was so sweet, she was just thrilled! 🙂

We will check him again next Tuesday and see if we can start the oral chemo again and at what dose. Leo is much better, is less weaken by this gastro-enteritis and got most of his energy and appetite back. We saw what it is when he gets sick and we hope that it won’t happen too often! 😉

Leo developed a type of gastro-enteritis this week, which really wiped him out! 🙁 We brought him to clinic on Monday to be checked; we were told just to watch him. He got better but yesterday night he had a really bad diarrhea and vomited a lot. He pretty much emptied himself up and we ended up at the ER for rehydration at 11 pm at night! It helped him a lot and he was better this morning.

We are also obviously very tired from the whole thing, Alex got the same thing and Charlotte developed it tonight… but we are glad Leo made it through without developing a fever. This is the first time he got sick and now we know that he can resist it on his own, pretty much. His ANC was at 1500 on Monday, which surely helped him to fight this virus.

We restarted his chemo treatment at half dose on Tuesday for the full week. Then next week he is scheduled to take 75% of the dose. Soon we should know what dose he should be using to be stable in maintenance and we look forward to it.

It’s hard to say how he got this viral infection, as we have been, like always, so careful… anyway, it was scary but he made it through! He slept pretty much all afternoon long today to recover. 🙂

Léo just had a blast with his grandparents the last 10 days! 100% attention was the key to go through the steroids smoothly…! 😉 Then they all had a great time in Carpinteria while Mama had a few days on her own to relax a bit more. It was fun for everyone!

On Sunday we did the “Galette des rois” celebration and Léo ended up being the king! It was funny because he got the first piece in which the “fève” was but since he didn’t finish his slice we kept looking for it… we ended up eating pretty much the whole “galette”, even if he was the king since the beginning! We didn’t force ourselves too much though, as the cake was so good! 😉

Léo turned 3 yesterday: our big boy is becoming more independent and loves it! He put his pajamas on his own Sunday night for the first time: he was so proud of himself! We were all so happy to celebrate his birthday together. Grandpa made a delicious cake that surely was appreciated! 🙂

This morning we went to Zimmer Museum (a place for kids in LA): he enjoyed himself so much over there. There was a plane and an ambulance he could drive: that was much fun! 🙂

Before then we stopped by clinic for a blood test; since his ANC dropped (down to 630) we were told to stop all medications again.

We will test him next Tuesday and see where he is at; then we will cut the doses in half until his little body gets adjusted to all this cocktail of meds. He is doing well, just a little cranky!! 😉