Day 85

Tuesday.  The resident brought in Riley's bloodwork numbers this morning, that is routine.  What is not routine are the numbers.  His white blood cell count continues to go up ... and he has neutrophils today... 6 of them  ??  Which makes his ANC jump up.   Without saying it, Dr. Shutes (the resident) and I are both thinking the same thing.  This looks promising!   I step out into the hall a little while later and see Dr. Kopp.  I say, "What is going on??"  She says (with a nervous look), "I don't know... I've called the lab twice already this morning.  They assure us the results will be back in one hour."   Dr. Kopp says she is headed down to the lab to look at the results herself. 

We wait...

A little while later,
The doctors come to our room with smiles on their faces and give us the most wonderful news...
Riley is still in remission!!  The blasts they saw in his blood work were blasts... a blast is an immature cell.  In leukemia those immature cells never mature.  But they figure that he had "regular" immature cells that would have matured if they stayed in the bone marrow longer, but instead they were shooting out of his bone marrow trying to fight the infection he had.
On Sunday they also said that those cells did not look "normal".  They didn't exactly look like the blasts that they saw at diagnosis, but they were not normal looking either.  As they were able to see them better because of the biopsy, they saw that they were not leukemia cells, and that they probably looked different just from the chemo that he has had. 

ALL IS WELL!!!  We are back on schedule.  Extra chemo averted!!

Riley will be able to go home tomorrow!!  He has to finish his cycle of antibiotics from the infection he had... that will finish tomorrow and we can take our boy home!!  What a roller coaster!  That is cancer... one day you are up, another you are down...     Today we are up!!!  This is a SUPER tuesday (in more than one way:) for sure!

Prayer works!  We are blessed!!