Wed, July 2nd and Thurs, July 3rd - Wednesday was a full day at the hospital for testing. We start off in the oncologists office around 9am at St Mary's for a CBC blood test. This test tells us where his blood counts are. Today it shows that his white counts are down and his ANC is only 66 (under 1,000 we need to limit interactions with others). These are expect results as the chemo beats on the immune system. His ANC being so low mean that his immune system is compromised and his ability to fight off infections and the like are greatly reduced. This means that we need to keep him pretty isolated until this goes back up.

Next we went to the Kimmel outpatient center at St Mary's to prepare for his spinal infusion, other chemo and testing. As usual, he is greeted by a host of nurses with big smiles that really love him. Several of these nurses are the same nurses that treated him when he first had Leukemia years ago. They are really special people! I won't name names Judy, Pam and Michelle :)

Now its basically a hour or 2 wait before he is put under anesthesia for the spinal procedure. This is always the hardest time, as he is unable to eat or drink anything since the night before and he is more hungry than usual because of the steroids that are part of his treatment.

Around noon he is put under and his procedure is soon after completed. They then start the remainder of his chemo via IV. Cole wakes up around 2pm and I have his favorite Sausage, Egg and Cheese on a Croissant sandwich waiting for him.  Sufficient to say, the sandwich didn't last long. Now we just need to wait for the the remainder of his Chemo to be given over the next 2 hours and an hour of monitoring before we can go home.

Around 4pm I get a call from his doctors with some of his results. They were testing the spinal fluids, the spinal fluid pressure and his bone marrow. The spinal fluids which had over 4,000 cells from the sample site had reduced last week to 450, were now down to 23. We were hoping for zero, but 23 is still very good and further demonstrates that the chemo is working. His spinal pressure originally was at 23 and was what we believe was the cause of the swollen optic nerve, as normal rang is 12-18. Today's test showed that the pressure is now down to 18. This is also good news. The bone marrow test has to be sent out and typically we would have it back on Friday, but because of the holiday we probably will get these results on Monday. However, our local doctors looked at the bone marrow cells under the microscope and the preliminary results looked clean.

It's now 5pm and we are finally on our way home. Cole is pretty wiped out from the days events and me too. Again our special friends have provided dinner for us. Thank you to Jennifer Kramer and family for providing a very nice homemade meal for us!

On Thursday Cole woke up and was feeling good again. I am constantly amazed how resilient and positive this boy is! Our friend Michelle Soto again watched Cole and his sister Madisen, so that Denise and I could get into work again. We are trying to stay on top of work as much as possible now, as we confident that at some point in the coming months that we will need to be out of town for at least a few months.

Cole had a good day. He was a bit tired, but this is to be expected. When we returned home from work, we were again presented with Dinner. This time it was a delivery from Thai Shokun. Thank you to the Klein's, Fecther's and Greenspan's. The evening ended with a good game of Monopoly.

The Cole Strong 28 Baseball Tournament is on!!!! We won't need many teams, as we have already filled the 8u, 9u and 10u divisions. I am sure we will have the 11u division filled very soon. However we will need sponsors, silent auction items and volunteers. Thank you to the sponsors who have already come forward and signed up! Please see the tournament website for more info: www.eteamz.com/colestrong.

Again, Denise & I cannot thank you all enough for all of your love and support that you all have shown us!!!