There goes the hair

We have some friends in here who have a girl that is 9 days older than Andrew and 5 days ahead in chemo. Last week, she started to lose handfuls of her hair and her mother decided it was time for the buzzer. I noticed a few days ago some stray hairs on Andrew's bouncer, but I really didn't think much of it until yesterday when I ran my hand through his hair and got several hairs, each time. Hair loss and cancer are almost inseparable, and I guess I'm not quite ready to see his go; it was almost his trademark when he was born when he was known as "The White Kid with Hair." I guess now he'll just look like everybody else. I'm just so glad this is the only external manifestation of his cancer treatment, even though I know there's a lot going on inside.

We talked to the bone marrow people for about an hour and a half today. This is a conversation I really didn't want to have, and it ended up being just about the most depressing conversation I've had in a while. They say any extramedullary involvement doesn't bode well for prognosis, which I knew, but I was gearing up for the next big bout of information in a few weeks. Like the oncology people, the bone marrow people are great, they're just people that I hope I never have to work with. It was a very informative talk, and I learned that even had I found a way to save Andrew's cord blood, they wouldn't use it.

We went down for an ultrasound today because Andrew's scrotum has swollen up a ton in the last day or two. At first we were worried it was his actual testicle (which his last ultrasound showed had increased in size), but it was getting big enough that we were pretty sure there was fluid. According to the radiologist, his testicle is .47 now rather than .8 somethings!!! (I was too excited to remember the units). This is a good sign. We knew his eye looked much better, but we had attributed a lot of that to the surgeon debulking his tumor during the biopsy of his eye. Maybe, just maybe he's responding well to chemotherapy.

Andrew's been such a good kid through all this. The nurses keep asking me, is he always this happy? I've seen him countless times during "tummy time" get up on his elbows and do a face-plant because he's so tired, but still with a huge gaping grin on his face.