Can an ANC go any lower?!

"Hi Mama" says the pretzel (or Carter the ventriloquist)

While we're in the hospital, they draw Carter's blood at 4am. This way when we wake up and get a chance to talk to the nurse or doctor we know where we stand for the day. Yesterday we mentioned Carter's ANC was very low (93), so the doctors weren't letting us go anywhere. Well, today it's 0. The good news is it can't go any lower! Hopefully, it won't take too long to go back up. It's scary when it's this low and Carter's body has no way to fight off any infection. He had a fever again today, but this may be due to his counts being so low. So far, his blood cultures are negative, which is good.

In order to make sure Carter hasn't developed pneumonia, he had another chest x-ray this afternoon. Luckily, Grammy was here to relieve me for a couple hours and she was able to go into the x-ray room with Carter (unlike pregnant Mom). We'll find out results tomorrow. Also, the doctors finally began to notice what we mentioned to them three weeks ago, that Carter eyelids have started to droop. They had an optimologist come in and evaluate him today. Carter did not like the drops or the exam at all. I tried telling him he's been through much worse, but it's hard to reason with a 2 year old. And the doctor concluded, it is just droopy eyelids. This is a rare side effect of one of the chemo drugs, and we had read about this. The doctor said it usually goes away after treatment.

Our hope is that Carter's ANC goes back up dramatically tomorrow and Thursday, and he remains fever-free. Then, there is a possibility we can go home Thursday afternoon. This would allow us to make our MRI appointment at UCLA on Friday morning at 6am. We don't look forward to putting Carter through this ordeal again, but this could be the scan that allows the surgeons to make the decision if Carter will have a resection surgery or if we have to do a transplant. The doctor today said if Carter can just have surgery, the surgeon just might decide to do it next week. This is all being very hopeful, but we are optimistic people! Otherwise, Carter would start Round 4 the following week and we'd have to wait to scan again. We're really hoping for the best on all ends!!!