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Welcome to Caleb's Web Page. It has been provided to keep our family and friends updated on Caleb's battle with T-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (T-ALL). Caleb was diagnosed on July 3, 2002 and was scheduled to complete treatment in September 2005. Unfortunately, just 4 months shy of completing treatment, May 2005, he had an isolated relapse in the testicles. Obviously, the relapse was a huge blow, but we are fortunate in that his bone marrow (BM) and central nervous system (CNS) were not affected. However, it required us to start over. Our options were to go forward and follow a relapse protocol, which meant approximately two more years of chemotherapy OR a bone marrow transplant. Our family was tested and fortunately, Jared was a perfect match. However, after much deliberation and consultation with Caleb's oncologist and several others around the country, we opted to follow the relapse protocol, AALL02P2. It has been a long haul, but on October 2, 2007, Caleb took his final dose of chemo.
Since I mention Caleb's blood counts so often and since they've become such important numbers in our daily lives, I'm posting what normal counts would be in a healthy child for comparison:
White Blood Count (WBC) - (5.0 - 14.5)
Platelets (PLT) - (140 - 420)
Hemoglobin (HGB): >12
Hematocrit (HCT): Transfuse around 20
ANC: Needs to be greater than 1000 to fight off infection
CHILDHOOD CANCER RIBBON
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Journal
Friday, June 12, 2009 9:53 PM CDT Wow! It's been ages since I updated. I've had good intentions of updating, but I guess you know what that means...all is good!
Caleb is doing well. He's 11 years old now and finishing up the 5th grade. He's very active playing soccer in the fall and baseball in the spring. He's also been taking guitar lessons for awhile now.
Medical wise...no complaints. He goes to the doctor every other month and we've had no real issues. Of course, during the winter months we had a couple of episodes of not feeling well with fever, but no other real issues so that always scares the crap out of us, but virus' were running wild at that point. He just had an appointment last week and his counts were good, weight was 86 pounds and 4'10" tall. He's hoping to hit the 5 foot mark really soon. He has quite the social calendar to keep up with as it's a different friend every weekend that he's wanting to go spend the night with or have spend the night here.
As for Jared, he's 14, finishing up the 8th grade and almost 6' tall. He's staying busy with his various music endeavors. He's involved in both Wind Ensemble and Jazz Band at school. Then, he's involved in a local community band that practices three hours every Monday night. They perform at various functions and activities around the community. He's still doing karate, but that has taken sommewhat of a back seat since April because he ran track this spring running both the 800m and 1600m. He did pretty well and improved his 1600m time to 5:36 by time the district conference meet rolled around. He's going to run cross country in the fall for the high school and they stared pre-conditioning this past week and will continue to practice during the summer.
As for him, he had another passing out episode at school on Monday in shop class. He wasn't feeling well and sat down on a stool and put his head down and woke up on the floor and hit his head on the concrete. Paramedics were called out, but he was okay. However, since this is about the 6th time he has done this, I took him to the ER. There, they did the works on him...blood sugar, EKG, CAT Scan, full CBC. Everything checked out fine as it always has. However, the ER put in a referral to the pediatric clinic. The peds doctor put in a referral for a neurological diagnostic, as well as a referral to see the pediatric neurologist and cardiologist. The diagnostic takes place next week...should be fun because it has to be a sleep deprived test. The neurology appointment is the first week of July and the cardiology appointment is still in the works. I don't feel there are any issues, but we'll have everything checked out just to make sure especially in light of his chosen sports activities.
We are going to get back to camping this year. We used to camp all the time before Caleb was diagnosed and did some prior to his relapse, but haven't done any since then. We are renting a pop-up next month and will do a short weekend trip. Then, in August, we're going to head to Oregon and Crater Lake to exercise some ghosts. Crater Lake is where our journey into the cancer world began as we were camping when Caleb became sick and he was airlifted from Klammath Falls to Seattle. So, memories of such a beautiful place are not so beautiful. So, we are renting a pop-up and taking an entire week. Part of me is looking forward to it, but there's another part that's not wild about going. However, it will be good and we'll have fun and I am looking forward to using the pop-up as opposed to a tent. If we like it, we may look to buy a used one for next year.
In any event, that's pretty much it. If I can figure out how to use my scanner, I'll try and post some knew pictures...however, I think I've been saying that for a long time.
Thanks for taking time to stop by.
Deborah
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