Today was Curtis' first day in the outpatient clinic at CHEO. While in between chemo treatments, we have to be seen here twice a week - generally Monday's and Thursday's. Basically, doctors want to make sure things are going well for him at home, with respect to tolerating chemo, general nutrition (weight gain/loss), blood pressure & temparature, etc. His blood counts will also be checked, and if necessary a GCSF shot given (this helps to speed the recovery of white blood cells).

So today things went pretty good for Curtis. His blood counts were checked, and as expected he is neutrapenic (neutrapolys are 0.01). What this means is that he has no immune system right now, so it's imperative he not come in contact with any germs. Should he develop a fever while neutrapenic, it's back to the hospital. His other blood counts were good today - plateletes were 162 and hemoglobin 94. As well as having his blood counts checked, he also had to have the GCSF shot, and a bandage change on his broviac line. Nurses also removed the bandage from his neck. Curtis finds all of these procedures very difficult to deal with, but we're getting through it. On the brighter side of things, Curtis started making his bead necklace today, something all oncology patients get to do. There are different colored beads for different procedures, so you can imagine the necklace can get quite long. They also gave him a quilt, something part of a project called "project smile".

So, we're still lucky enough to be at home, and we're keeping our fingers crossed that Curtis stays healthy enough to be at home until our next round in two weeks.