End of first half of Re-Intensification

So just a little update on the past few weeks. Casper completed the second round of steroids. The second dose was a little harder on everyone, and the toll the chemo is taking on his body was also more obvious. In addition to his explosive roid induced anger outbursts, he's been quite pale and lethargic at times. The hair that was growing from his head has mainly fallen out again. Casper recently learned how to do sommersaults, and so he's been practicing this skill at home, as a result he's created a backwards mohawk effect at the center of his head. There is a perfectly straight line of shiny baldness running down the middle with peach fuzz around, it's quite funny looking!

We've known that the possibility of being admitted to the hospital over this period was high, and Janet very generously offered to take the long trip over here again to help. The first week of her visit was nice and event free. Casper's bloodcounts were good enough last Wednesday for him to start phase II. On Friday, however, Casper started spiking a fever and developed a few unidentifiable red dots on his chest. We were admitted back to the hospital that night, with concern that the rash might be chickenpox which can be serious to immune compromised people. Because of this, we were placed in an "isolation" room, and Casper hasn't been allowed out for the past two days. Janet has been great and has spent the last couple days with Amelie at home while Spence and I have remained in captivity with Casper :0)

Since he's been here Casper has received one large dose of steroids (lucky us), anti-viral medication, IV antibiotics and fluids for the past couple days and he's doing very well, he even has color in his cheeks again which we haven't seen in a few weeks. The spots on his chest never got worse, so today the disease specialist concluded that he just developed a bacterial skin infection which we are very relieved by. We just got the green light from the doctors to leave our room and we are expected to head home later today. We took a one day break from the chemotherapy, but now that he's "fine" they are resuming with the program again. Hopefully he'll tolerate the next few weeks of therapy well and continue to fight off infections, and we won't be back here too soon!