AFP counts are in again, but we don’t know if it matters

The boys in deep concentration

Today we had Carter’s blood work done at CHOC. By the way, the new guidelines with no visitors allowed at the hospital and outpatient clinics due to the scare of swine flu…awesome. We found a parking space right in front of the clinic and the waiting room had two patients with a parent each. No coughing, sneezing and crowded rooms. It was great.

We called the clinic a few hours after leaving to see if they had received blood work results. Carter’s ANC is over 3500, which is a relief. We are definitely ready for that transplant call now! And I asked if they got the AFP numbers that were drawn last week. Carter’s AFP went from 270,000 (at diagnosis) to 59,800 to 2,200 to 171 to now…32.4!! A normal range is somewhere under 10, most likely 7. We called and left a message for our oncologist to see his feelings about Carter’s AFP count being so much lower now. We also left a message for UCLA and passed along the numbers. I’m sure we’ll get their input tomorrow at Carter’s re-evaluation appointment. Something is obviously shrinking in there! We don’t know if it’s shrinking in the correct places, but the tumors are substantially smaller with those kinds of numbers. It will be interesting to hear if these are normal numbers for liver cancer patients going into transplant surgery. We also have a few other questions for the doctors, so it will be good to sit down with them. And I told Matt we should take our bags in the car with us, in case they tell us to just stay because they found a liver for Carter. One can hope!