Continued updates

Today's update is brought to you by Mark. I went home last night and am at work today. I'll head back to the hospital this afternoon (hopefully the snow will be all gone by then). Mark sent me an email this morning and here's the latest: "Dr. Mullen and the gang just arrived with a little more good news. When they looked at Sawyer's chromosomes, they found that he had some extra chromosomes which is called hyperdiploidy, and is a good thing. Dr. Mullen stated that folks with these chromosomal markers usually respond better to treatment. He also noted that they are still going to hit Sawyer hard with the chemo. It also sounded like Dr. Mullen plans on doing the lumbar puncture (LP). Following that procedure, Sawyer will need to lie flat on his back for one hour for the chemo to do its work. Our nurse today is Emily and she came up with brilliant idea to change the needles in Sawyer's port while he knocked out with the LP. Finally, Sawyer woke up today with stomach cramps. This could be due the Wendy's spicy chicken wrap AND Subway sub he had for dinner, or his meds, or a little nervousness due to the pending procedure. That is the update for now. Wanted to give you something for the blog and always happy to share positive news." The lumbar puncture is the same procedure he had last week where they give him a shot of chemo in the spinal fluid (he'll have another one in a couple weeks).He can't eat or drink after 5 am until after it's done. He gets knocked out for it and there's not really any residual pain. They were planning on changing the IV needles in his port today so let's hope they'll just do it while he's out as Mark noted above. It's not a painful procedure but they might as well do it then. His port should be much more comfortable since the original needles were much longer than they needed to be and they'll be able to put in shorter ones. Plus it's been a week since he had the port put in so the site should be mostly healed. He had two incisions and the upper one was just to help them place the tubing between his vein and his port. The bandage for that should come off today as well which will be nice. He can feel the tubing since it runs over his collar bone -- something he'll get used to with time.