December 18, 2003
Third E-Mail
Hello everyone,
I hope this finds everyone healthy and looking forward to the holidays.
So, to start where we left off: In my mind Cycle 3 will be the "school cycle" for two reasons. The first is the all-school hat day they had at Joe's school the day before his admission. The second is that Joe participated in a trial run of a web cam connection between his hospital room and his classroom.
The first attached picture is Joe's 1st grade class, complete with hats. Joe is the one with the Santa hat (the picture is kind of dark). The second attached picture is Joe waving at his class via the web cam next to the lap top. (The person in the back is the hospital librarian.) The UI Hospitals and Clinics teacher has been working on web cam capability for a while, particularly for use with kids who come for long stays from far away. They wanted to test it locally and Joe was their guinea pig. He loved it and the kids in his class loved it (they saw him and talked to him via a much bigger screen in his classroom). The transmission was choppy but good enough. I think they are going to try a second run with him during a future chemo cycle, probably one in late January.
He was in from 12/5 - 12/7, went to school for at least part of every day the following week, and then was re-admitted because of a recurrent low-grade fever on 12/14. It was our first experience with an "observational" hospital admission. He felt pretty low in the hospital, attributable to his very low white blood cell count, but did not have a fever in the hospital and all his infection tests were negative. I am happy to report that he is now home again and feeling good.
We will spend Christmas here and go in for Cycle 4 on 12/26 - 1/1/04. Joe's tumor removal surgery date is set for January 16 and he will resume chemo at the end of January.
Here's wishing Joe many white blood cells and clear margins around his tumor.
Love, Jenny