Wed, July 9th and Thurs, July 10th - Wednesday was a tough day. He was not able to eat or drink anything, not even his pain pill because he was having his spinal procedure. His body was really aching this morning and we had to help him into the car for our drive to the doctors/hospital. When we arrived, he could not walk and I had to get a wheelchair to bring him in. When I finally saw his doctor, he told me that I could give him his pain pill and that helped a bit. He still was very tired and uncomfortable. The doctors did his CBC blood test and his counts were back up again. His counts are now 4747, so that means his immune system is rebounding well.

Off we went to the Kimmel outpatient for his weekly Wednesday procedure and chemo. One of his favorite nurses Judy, brought him in a present. It was a fishing pole that was her brothers and she wanted Cole to have it. This was so very sweet of her. Cole received his chemo and all went well. Now it was just a waiting game for the results. We really want and need his Leukemia cells to be at 0% to be able to have the current protocol timeline to be the same. A couple of hours go by and the doctors call and let us know that some Leukemia still exists. It is down from its original of 70% to 3%, but nonetheless it still exists. This means that they will extend the current protocol cycle by one week in an effort to get to 0%. This was clearly not the results we were looking for! Now we have to hope and pray that next weeks test is 0%.

Cole came home and we had a nice evening. Dinner was supplied by our good friends Ilan and Robin Hurvitz, thank you! Cole was pretty tired and the rest of the evening was uneventful.

Thursday returned Denise and I to work, thanks to our good friends who are watching Cole at our house. I shouldn't even call them friends, they are really like family and we do not know what we would do without them. Cole was still pretty tired, but was in good spirits.The pain had largely subsided for Cole and he no longer needed his pain meds in the evening.

We were notified that our bone marrow match swab kits had arrived from the Dana Farber Institute at our doctors and we scheduled to bring the kids in Friday morning to swab them. The swabs are then returned to Dana Farber and we should have match results in a week or two.

This evening I started a GoFundMe fundraising page, as I have no idea where this adventure is going to take us. As a starter, Denise will be reducing her hours at work and new insurance rates have co-pays at a much higher rate than before. The results on this page so far have been incredible.

The Cole Strong 28 Baseball Tournament is going strong. All age divisions are filled!!!! 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.

Michelle and Cole goofing around

Cole in his hospital room awaiting his procedure

Cole with nurse Judy giving him a fishing pole