Happy Little Christmas

            6 January 2015: Epiphany, the day to celebrate the wise men from the east finding the young child, Jesus, and presenting him with gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.

            December was rough. After watching David’s white blood counts rise, to 90, 91, and 95 (very bad news) in the first week of December, he was admitted to Lunder 10, inpatient, on December 19^th, with severe abdominal pain: enteritis, or inflammation of the intestine. He was discharged on Wednesday, 24 December, in time for Christmas. And for 27 hours on December 27-28, all of our progeny were together in Lexington.

            New Year’s Eve, Matt drove David down to Manhattan to spend the holiday with all their siblings at R’els Manhattan apartment. Some went to Central Park for the midnight 4-mile run.

            On Friday, 2 January, David began the second round of decitabine chemotherapy. It’s caused some nausea and fatigue. His hematocrit (red blood cells) and platelet counts are relatively stable; the white blood cell count is low, which is great news. He finished his fifth and final infusion today and will take 3 weeks off while his blood counts recover.

            Here are the blood counts. For now, the goal is very low WBC.

Date of Blood Draw (CBC)	White Blood Cell Count	Percentage Blasts in circulation	Absolute Neutrophils
19-Dec-14	35.24	68.0%	1.40
20-Dec-14	27.57	55.8%	0.96
23-Dec-14	12.83	55.0%	0.38
24-Dec-14	7.99	23.4%	0.36
28-Dec-14	2.91	32.4%	0.10
31-Dec-14	2.56	7.6%	0.00
2-Jan-15	2.56	18.0%	0.13
5-Jan-15	2.16	6.0%	0.17