No question that this has been the hardest week so far of this experience, both physically and emotionally. It’s been really rough. Kendall has been very, very sick, and there have been moments when I wondered if he would be coming home from this hospitalization. The doctors have been stumped as to why so many things have been going wrong and shutting down with his body. We also had a scare when at one point it looked like the cancer might have spread to his brain, but an MRI was thankfully able to rule that and other brain abnormalities out.
One (of many) of the big concerns of this week was that Kendall hasn’t been able to eat. He is completely neutropenic right now, which along with some other complications made it dangerous and difficult to give him a feeding tube or even to give him nutrients intravenously. After some major campaigning (pestering?) on my part, I was able to get permission to go to the hospital during daytime hours to help him try and eat something. I brought food from home, which seemed to help. Today was a big turning point in that Kendall was able to eat some on his own. Progress!
We’re not sure how much longer Kendall will have to stay in the hospital or what criteria he needs to meet to be released, but he is still fevering and having several strange symptoms so it may be a while yet. Also hoping to get his platelets, hemoglobin, and white blood cell counts much higher. We did learn that the team wants to move up the time frame for his bone marrow transplant to the beginning of 2021. If everything goes well Kendall will do one more full course of chemo, 2-3 weeks of radiation on his spine, and then hopefully the transplant.
(This picture from earlier in the week of Kendall’s rash really doesn’t do it justice. It’s pretty gruesome, and covers his entire body. Not fun.)
