Two week update

I can't believe that two weeks have already gone by! For 3 days after treatment, Josh was pretty miserable. Ok, we were both pretty miserable! Josh really wanted something to eat but didn't know what he wanted, leaving me making and throwing food away faster than he could ask for it. On Tuesday morning, at about 5:30 am, he woke me up to tell me that he thinks he was finally over the hump. I could tell by the sound of his voice and was super happy for him.....us! Each day he got a little better and ate a little more.
On the 17th we went to see Dr. Legant to see if Josh's blood levels were good enough to start another round the following Tuesday. On the way to the appointment Josh kept telling me that he didn't fell well enough to go back just yet. Well, he was right. His blood levels were almost nonexistent. His white blood count was 0.8, (I think) meaning 800. The low end of normal is 4.0 or 4,000. His platelets were 47. The low end of normal is 150. Needless to say, the chemo medicine was doing its job.....very well. With his blood counts being so low, he defiantly wasn't ready to go for more treatment. In fact, he wasn't to be going anywhere. Because of the super low white count, she advised him to not go anywhere where there is lots of germs and big crowds. It was fine for him to be outside in the open air, but he needed to stay close to home in case he started to feel weak. He felt really good until she told him about his blood level counts. When we got in the car he told me that because she said he really shouldn't be feeling all that well that maybe he did feel so good after all. Luckily, he fought through the mind games and had a pretty good weekend. As far as staying out of big crowds, well that's another story. Peyton had a 4 game basketball tournament over the weekend that Josh was not going to miss. He did really good about sitting by himself away from the other people and leaving as soon as it was over. He said that he could miss it since he was feeling so well. Peyts was so glad he made it to all his games. I don't think he plays as hard when Josh isn't there.
We went back to Dr. Legant yesterday (the 22nd) to make sure his neaulasta shot was working to bring his white count up faster than usual. She said that he has young marrow that bounces back quickly. In 6 days, his white count was above normal at 9.1 or 9,100. He still feels a little low on energy, but looks and feels really, really well. After a quick visit to his doctor Tuesday morning, we will go back into the hospital for the second round of meds. She is going to order more nausea medicine this go round, hoping that he won't be so miserable following the treatment. After this round, we will wait two weeks before we go up to the Huntsman for another PET scan and then another week to get the results. These results will determine if he has to have another round of chemo or if we can move on to the transplant procedure.
I will update again next week to let you all know how treatment week went. Until then.....thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you for the dinners, text messages, thoughts and prayers!! We are so, so grateful to have such amazing people in our lives!!!!