U of C Days 37 to 45

Apologies again for waiting so long in between posts. Leo is feeling better. He is walking the halls and sitting up much more now than he has been since the seizures. But his counts haven't come up. They have actually gone down and then come up slightly again. Last I posted, he was at 0.5 for his white blood cell count. He went as low as 0.2 a few days ago then back to 0.4 today. His doctors havemade it pretty clear that they're not going to let him go home until those counts come up a bit. He's still been getting a bunch of transfusions, both platelets and blood, so that pretty much the same as it has been.

Last Tuesday, Leo had a bone marrow biopsy and the good news is that they are seeing healthy red blood cells that are not his in the marrow. That indicates that the cells from the cord blood are starting to produce in his marrow. They infused 2 cord blood units and they are only seeing the cells from one of them, which means that likely his body didn't take the cells from the 2nd unit of cord blood. The cells that they're seeing are cancer free, which is great news, but there are very few of the cells, which they're disappointed about, but not totally discouraged. They have further tests coming in tomorrow or Tuesday that will give us more information on what's going on, but for now, the doctors want him to stay in the hospital until those WBC counts come up a bit more. The other piece of good news that we got is that his doctors recognize how much he misses the girls and have allowed them to come visit. Of course, they cannot be sick and they have to gown and mask up for the duration of the visit, but the doctors have written a note saying it is ok. We just have to be very careful because they are all going to daycare/school now and are exposed to many other kids and germs.

The ball park estimate the doctors gave on his potential release was sometime in October. So we will see how that goes. Thanks to everyone that has come by to visit. Leo really appreciates it and is so glad to see friends and family and to just chit chat for a while. Have a great week!