Our warrior Luke is coming home today! Since the last time I posted an update, much has happened. It has been a whirlwind as we navigated Lukes head to toe mucositis and other side effects. He spiked a fever one evening and we knew it was his marrow, counts, starting to kick in. Yet still, have to go through all the tests to make sure it isn’t something else. All clear. Just 3 nights ago we were up all night due to severe chest pains out of nowhere. CT, echo, ECG, all sorts of monitoring hooked up, check for pancreatitis, gallbladder, kidneys, and liver tests, all ok. I’m going to chalk that one up to the KFC chest pains. Luke has developed a love for KFC buckets of chicken. On that note, he has been eating like a champ. During the mucositis he could have a paint med prior to eating and also eat on the least painful side of his mouth. He had the timing down great. Now, the last 24 hours he hasn’t had to have any pain meds because he has some white blood cells that have started clearing up the mucositis. Amazing what just a few of those little suckers can do. I analyze and analyze, calculate, make graphs, and fuss over Lukes labs every single day. They run them at midnight so we wait up to see 3 of the tests and then I fuss the next day over them. I predicted that this day was coming about 6 days ago. His lil monocytes had started to climb. Once they start really going, we get VERY excited! And here we are. His ANC went from 50-140 in 24 hours. He had to hit 100 for discharge today.

We have had an extremely busy week prepping for transplant. Just scheduling all the testing for pre-transplant, takes a ton of time. Coordinating the donor, me, workups as well as all of Lukes testing, is a lot. We will spend many full days, weeks, at Childrens doing these tests in the next two weeks all while monitoring Lukes levels. I can get into that later. For now, he’s coming home. We are going to celebrate another HUGE victory! He did it. We did it. God did it. His attitude is incredible. Head on straight going for the prize. That prize will be a cure, transplant. It is a long road, but one that together, we will conquer 100%.

As of now, Luke’s transplant is scheduled for March 7. (he will go in-patient on Feb. 27th for conditioning chemo pre-transplant). I will be harvested (bahahaha there’s something I never thought I would say) the morning of his transplant and then they will take my stem cells and walk them up to Luke and put them into him. Crazy. Sorry for the lack of updates, I’ll try and pick up the pace! For now, THANK YOU. Thank you for supporting us on this journey. The prayers, laughter, tears, and food. We feel it all. We need it all. We appreciate our posse so very very much.

Buckets and buckets of gratitude,

Suz