Thursday, September 29, 2005
Big turn around
We went in yesterday morning for Jacob's lumbar puncture not expecting much.
First thing, we got to meet with Karen Kristovich, BMT nurse practitioner, and she said... Jacob can now go into (uncrowded) stores to pick out his own video. He can eat restaurant food that's fully and freshly cooked (like pizza) and eaten outside. He can go into a friend's house, on a limited basis (the household has to have had no sick denizens or visitors for 48 hours, do the handwashing routine etc.)
The best part, at least as far as I was concerned, is that even the tests he flunked this time are getting very close. The keys are the CD4 lymphocyte numbers, and the immune function tests where they actually stimulate samples of his lymphocytes with pathogens and see if they can mount a proper response. Taken together these have been shown to correlate closely to actual resistance to real world germs.
So they redrew the labs yesterday, and there's a chance, if the next set comes back enough better, that Jacob could be back in school by his birthday October 23. He pointed out that last year he finished radiation therapy the day before his birthday, so it would be great if we could repeat something like that.
Needless to say we were thrilled. Maybe it was the euphoria and endorphins from that news, or the 4 mg of ativan, but the lumbar puncture itself went fabulously, and unlike the last time, he's had no pain since.
And last night we had a four star veggie pizza dinner al fresco at North Beach Pizza in San Mateo, Jacob's favorite.
First thing, we got to meet with Karen Kristovich, BMT nurse practitioner, and she said... Jacob can now go into (uncrowded) stores to pick out his own video. He can eat restaurant food that's fully and freshly cooked (like pizza) and eaten outside. He can go into a friend's house, on a limited basis (the household has to have had no sick denizens or visitors for 48 hours, do the handwashing routine etc.)
The best part, at least as far as I was concerned, is that even the tests he flunked this time are getting very close. The keys are the CD4 lymphocyte numbers, and the immune function tests where they actually stimulate samples of his lymphocytes with pathogens and see if they can mount a proper response. Taken together these have been shown to correlate closely to actual resistance to real world germs.
So they redrew the labs yesterday, and there's a chance, if the next set comes back enough better, that Jacob could be back in school by his birthday October 23. He pointed out that last year he finished radiation therapy the day before his birthday, so it would be great if we could repeat something like that.
Needless to say we were thrilled. Maybe it was the euphoria and endorphins from that news, or the 4 mg of ativan, but the lumbar puncture itself went fabulously, and unlike the last time, he's had no pain since.
And last night we had a four star veggie pizza dinner al fresco at North Beach Pizza in San Mateo, Jacob's favorite.
# posted by Ann @ 10:24 AM 
