With extra appointments and an unexpected blood transfusion on Saturday, Kendall ended up needing to be up in Salt Lake at the hospital on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday this past week. Even so, this did feel like a much easier week because he hasn’t had any chemo treatments since last Monday. It’s amazing how much better he feels without actively putting poison into his body every day. Food is even starting to taste good again! Being less anemic after the blood transfusion has also certainly helped.
Kendall’s scheduled PET scan from last Friday needed to be pushed back because of some X-rays of his back he had done during a neurosurgery visit on Thursday. The doctors wanted to make sure that there wasn’t any trace radiation in his body that could affect the PET scan readings. The decision of if he will have a bone marrow transplant really rests heavily on the results of this next PET scan. If there is any evidence of cancer anywhere in his body (likely) then they will go ahead and do the transplant. If there is not, they still may decide to proceed because it may give Kendall a greater chance of being in remission longer. We’ll see. We did just receive approval from our insurance to do a transplant, and the transplant team has started the process of beginning to test potential family donors to see if anyone is a match.
With Kendall’s PET scan being delayed until this coming Friday, he now won’t be admitted to the hospital for his next round of chemotherapy until Wednesday the 28th. When Kendall is not up in Salt Lake we certainly plan on taking advantage of some chemo-free and less sick days to spend time together as a family.