Last night we all went to the Stanford Men’s vs. San Jose State soccer match at Stanford.  Our nephew/cousin Andrew is still in town (graduated from Virginia Tech in May and is off to DC for his first job in October, but may have a work from CA/home arrangement for the first few months) so we invited him too.  Plus Sam’s BFF Alec and our awesome friend Diego. We saw *so many* friends there and Zack thought ahead and brought his sharpie pen so he could get players’ signatures after the game ❤️

It was bucket hat night too so we all got one.  😀

This week please send Sam’s white blood cells your best thoughts/prayers/karma/light — we are hoping that they are strong enough to get him admitted on Thursday.  Now I know that sounds strange “if the numbers are strong, why does he get admitted to the hospital?”  Well, the chemo that is on deck requires a minimum set of numbers for white blood cells, platelets, and neutrophils and his body has to “rebound” after the last round so that it’s ready for this round.  His body hit the target for platelets and neutrophils today so we are hopeful that WBCs will be there by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest. Platelets are the leading indicator, so the dramatic increase they showed at today’s blood draw was a good sign.

The reason we *really* want him to hit the target this week is it puts him on track to be able to attend the Homecoming Dance at Paly at the end of the month and Dr. Lacayo green-lighted that last week (Sam was *so* happy to get that news).  If Sam doesn’t get admitted this week, it gets postponed until the week of September 12th and that puts the schedule of future chemo doses up against the Homecoming deadline :( (He’ll get 4 doses of high dose methotrexate, 1 every 2 weeks for 8 weeks.  He has to be admitted for these doses because they titrate the dose by taking blood draws every 4-6 hours and also give him hydration therapy plus leukovorin to clear out the chemo once it’s done its job).  The hydration therapy can take 3+ days to flush his systems — average is 5 days to start, with subsequent admissions getting shorter.  But Dr. Lacayo said could be discharged as early as 42 hours if he’s really kickin’ it!  Gauntlet thrown down! 💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼

So that’s the update. 

We are looking forward to seeing our longtime friends, Jon, Liz and their 2 kids this afternoon at the pool for some long awaited hang out time.  It’s going to be a 100+ Degree day here in Palo Alto! 

Happy Labor Day!