Les Fountain's Cancer Experience

Friday, 10/31/03 “On Halloween we went to Gammie’s house and carved pumpkins. It was such a great time because we made a Buzz Lightyear Pumpkin. And also, we made a Bob the Builder Pumpkin. We tried some new bread at dinner – it was good. Grandpa Martin, Aunt Joanna, Uncle Billy and Jazmine were there too. That’s pretty much all of it.” - quote from Les.

Monday, 10/27/03 Les had x-rays of his chest and sinuses last week and has finally been diagnosed with sinusitis. He’s on antibiotics now and I hope we will see some improvement soon. His blood counts are outstanding. His ANC was just above 2000 last week. His weight is also slowly increasing. He was up to 16.5 kg (36 ¼ lb) last week. YEAH!!! We have another clinic visit tomorrow (Tuesday). Les will also have another hearing test tomorrow. It will be interesting to see if his hearing has changed anymore since the last chemo treatment. Next week Les is scheduled for his next inpatient chemo treatment with a whole new batch of chemo medicines. They are planning on doing an MRI at that time too. The MRI will tell us if the treatments are still working. The last MRI, back in July was very good in that one of the tumor nodules in his spine had disappeared since beginning treatment. We pray that this next MRI will show similar improvements. Overall, Les has been doing great. We are

Friday, 10/10/03 Les’ ANC was up about 1000 points higher than last week, so we stayed overnight at the hospital for his next chemo treatment last Monday (10/6/03). YEAH! It’s amazing how quickly they can go up, and down. Les had his hearing test on Monday morning (10/6/03). They can detect a slight hearing loss mainly in the higher frequencies. His right ear seems to be a bit worse than his left ear. Because of the amount of hearing loss, they reduced the strength of the dose of Cisplatin by 50%. Hopefully by reducing the dose, they can minimize any further loss. This is the last time Les will need this particular chemo medicine. Note: the hearing loss is fairly minimal right now, and we don’t even notice it. He does seem to be a little extra sensitive to loud noises though. Please continue to keep Les in prayer. God is able to heal his ears – I believe it! We also started giving Les his last round of Etoposide at home. After 21 days are over, we won’t have to administer anymore

Wednesday, 10/1/03 Les was able to avoid a hemoglobin transfusion this last round. Yeah!!! His ANC is still really low though – even lower than before. We think it’s because he’s still battling this cold/cough thing. His next round of chemo was originally scheduled for tomorrow (10/2) but we are delaying it until next week. His ANC needs to be above 500 and right now it is around 300. Check out the Blood Counts for Kids website link under Favorite Websites/ Les’ Favorites/page 2 for more information about what the different parts of the blood do and what normal counts are. The ANC is the Absolute Neutrophil Count (Neut and Benny on the website). Well, Les is still a bit sick, but Jason and I are healthy again – for the most part. We have been able to adjust Les’ feedings back to a little more reasonable timing at night, which is giving us a bit more sleep. Les is still vomiting occasionally, but not usually first thing in the morning like he had been. This last week was a bit top