We're at NYU tonight for Andrew's 5th radiation treatment. Last Friday, his hematologist ordered a lot of labs to look for signs of blood diseases that can occur during cancer/cancer treatments and affect platelets. Once those all came back clean, she concluded that the platelets were low due to chemo and would likely recover quickly—so he was approved to start radiation this past Monday.

On Monday, the platelet count had jumped from ~36 to over 100. As of yesterday, they were 150, which is the bottom of the normal range. He hasn't taken aspirin for about a week now, and the severe bruising is starting to improve.

So far, radiation is going very well. Andrew is a little fatigued, but much less than after a typical chemo day. He hasn't experienced any nausea or skin reactions. It seems like we haven't had a full week go the way we wanted (or expected) it to go in a long time. The plan is now to finish radiation by the end of next week, then resume chemo on Monday, August 4.

We are set to go on our first vacation alone with both kids on August 12. If everything goes according to plan (and that feels like a big if) and he gets chemo on the 4th, we'll be able to do it before he has chemo again on the 18th.