Round One goes to..... CARTER!!

That's right, we are done with the first round of chemotherapy!!! Last night was the last dose of the yucky medicine (for now)!!!! I made this sticker chart for Carter a few weeks ago. Every time he took his medicine, he got to choose a sticker and put it on. Last night was the last sticker so he got his "special surprise".....

an awesome craigslist find

Sorry about the messy garage :/ It was cold and dark outside. Plus the battery for this bad boy wasn't charged up so they could only sit in it anyways. We are all so happy to be done with this round! We had our clinic visit yesterday as well. Carter was scheduled for another LP and bone marrow aspirate at 1:00 which means he couldn't eat anything after 7am. I was really worried because this boy eats more than I do these days, thanks to the steroids. Every ten minutes, he's telling us something else he wants to eat. But he did really well all day without food. He just keeps impressing me more and more each day. By the time we got to the clinic, he was reaching his limit. It's a good thing we were scheduled with his favorite doctor. I don't know exactly what it is about this particular doctor but Carter really likes him and always does exactly what he asks him to do. It's really cute actually. After the nurse took some blood, she came back in a few minutes later and announced that she had good news. Carter's blood counts are all looking really good. His white blood cell count is 4500 with an ANC of 2000!!! That's well into the "normal" range! It won't last long because he'll be starting on new chemo meds next week, but for now, it's awesome! Hemoglobin is 7.5 and platelets are in the normal range as well at 192,000. We are happy. His ANC needs to be at least 750 to start the next round and it looks like that won't be a problem at all. After the CBC, they took us to the procedure room for the two procedures they needed to do. They let me hold him until he falls asleep:
Then once he falls asleep (it only takes about 10 seconds, if that), they help me lay him down and then I'm shown the door. I go wait in the toy room until they come get me.

I took this picture while I was waiting for him to wake up afterwards. He's got great eyelashes. Once he woke up, we gave him all the food and drink he wanted and then headed home. I think he ate constantly until he went to bed. All day today he keeps reminding us that he does NOT have to take his yucky medicine. I guess he doesn't want us to forget :) So next week we should find out the results of all the tests and everything and have a better idea of what will happen from here on out. This first month is a lot of gathering information to determine what his exact treatment will be. So here we go! One month down, a lot more to go! Little victories :)