Hello!

Mason has settled in at home. He spent most of yesterday playing video games- but he was up out of his bed and more alert and awake than he ever was in the hospital. He made several attempts to go outside to shoot lacrosse goals and to play basketball, but it was REALLY sticky and hot, so he didn't last more than a few minutes. We are going to work on regaining our endurance and stamina.

He's been cleaning his plate at every meal- and yesterday sent me out for a "snack" around 8 p.m. so he could eat his 20 chicken nuggets before it was time for his chemo pills at 8:30.

Mason and I woke up really early this morning to get up to the hospital's clinic for his 8 a.m. appointment. They checked to see if he was going to need a platelet transfusion first- thankfully his lab work came back showing strong count recoveries, and platelets have more than doubled on their own in the last day, so there was no need for transfusion.

They were able to perform a bone marrow aspiration as an outpatient procedure. While he was under anesthesia, the nurses were able to change his dressing and flush his lines, which means that is one less thing that I need to worry about completing at home on Friday of this week.

We will now wait and see how successful the last round of chemotherapy was and what the level of leukemia is within the marrow itself. His doctor indicated that we should have a set plan for the next round of chemo by next Tuesday.

We are scheduled to be up at the hospital early next Thursday morning, 8/8, to be re-admitted for that round of treatment.

We are hoping to hear any day now what the next step toward the transplant will be- Mason's skin biopsy was done last Thursday and they expected it to take around one full week to have results.

He is so happy to be home. We are keeping him fairly isolated so that we don't need to make any emergency trips back to the hospital, but rest assured that he is enjoying every moment of his own bed, his own PlayStation, his own cabinet filled with snacks and time watching movies and playing games with his siblings. At today's visit, we had gained a few pounds- we plan to spend the rest of the time at home building that weight back up- along with his endurance level- so he can manage this next round of treatment even better.