February 11 - DAy + 5

Today is Blood Doner clinic in Montreal. I am sure it will be a huge success. I know that Trish, Maggie and Shirly have worked so very hard on this...Thanks to you all, it means the world to us.

Dave picked Kayla up from school yesterday and then picked up Ally from my sisters so he could spend some time with them. Kayla had two of her friends ( Charlotte and Jaden over for dinner)
she has not seen them since Ryan was admitted for transplant, so we thought this would be fun for her.) Ally spent some time with her Daddy and then put herself to sleep. (this is a new thing)
Her new word is (ouch, ouch and she says it for anything , we think it is funny. Once she was in bed, and Kayla's friend went home, Dave spent so time with KK before bed.

Ryan had a good night until about 3 am, then his throat, tummy and bum were hurting..This is Mucositis.. Michelle was his nurse again last night, she is great...She gave him Morphine at about 5:30 and again at 7:30 as the pain did not seem to subside..The Dr. will decide today if he should be put on a running drip of not.

Ryan's hair is starting to flake off onto his pillow now, he is none the wiser yet. He seems comfortable now. Not eating or drinking, that is expected.

We talked to his new fellow ( we call her Dr. Mira), which is one step above a resident and one below the staff Dr...(the staff Dr. over sees the entire unit.)
Mira told us yesterday that this is her first JMML patient. We asked alot of questions with regards to how Ryan is doing. She told us that it is good that he came in with no blasts, however even with no blasts, there usually is a few cells hiding somewhere in the blood, so that is why they blast Ryan's marrow with high levels of chemo, hoping to get those last cells and block his bone marrow before transplant and then infuse Ally's. This makes sense.. She said that usually with a sibling doner we see the engraftment at about two weeks, sometimes 3..
We also learnt that it is not just Ryan that has a 50 % chance of relapse, we thought that was the relapse rate of his disease..it seems that transplant either works or it dosn't (for all the children up here) which also makes sense when you think about it.
So now we wait for some sign of (graft vs host) and (graft vs Luekemia).

Ryans counts today:

WBC- less than 0.1
RBC - 94 after transfusion yesterday
PLT-34 after transfusion yesterday.

From our window we can see that it look dull over Toronto today. Not sure how cold it is, have not been outside since Sunday.
Providing Ryan is ok , I will be leaving tomorrow night to see my best friend Tina as it is her birthday, and then to see Ally. Then back to SKH for friday and home for the weekend to see Ally.

Hope everyone is having a nice week!