Week 55 and a prayer push

James' course of chemotherapy is 110 weeks. This past Thursday, May 15th, marked week number 55 of treatment. He is now half-way through.

Last Thursday, James' nurse called to say that James is cleared for chemo. She also gave me his counts. WBC (white blood cells) were 3.24. Hemoglobin was 11.1. Platelets 735k. ANC (Absolute Neutraphil Count--his ability to fight infection) is 1.97.

We are very proud of James. James doesn't like it when the nurses at clinic hold his finger to poke it for blood, but he will hold out a finger for them and after the poke, he will intently watch the nurse 'milk' his finger. After the nurse gets the blood, she will put a band-aid on. It's isn't usually long before he takes the bandaid off, or he won't do anything with that hand.


This past couple weeks we have been working on James taking his 6-MP tablets (chemo that he gets every day) by mouth. He has done very well. Momma and I decided to try James on taking his methotrexate by mouth. I woke James up at 4a.m. to take 5 1/2 tablets, he wasn't thrilled till I asked him if he wanted ice cream. After the not-so-smart move on my part, James thought it was time to play. He did go back to sleep around 4:30a.m. and Daddy said later that if James is asleep, 'use the g-tube.' James took the two other doses of methotrexate and one of his two doses of his leucovorin by mouth. He has been doing a little better working on eating too.

After three trys on Saturday, I managed to set up a prayer sign up for James. Its at mysignup.com again, under jamesskelly.

If the link doesn't work, type in www.mysignup.com/jamesskelly. If that doesn't work, please leave a comment on the blog or let us know somehow. If anyone knows how to put up a picture on the sign up, please let me know. I've been trying to get a picture up of James, but the picture won't show up.


James' g-tube is a little red and tender. Please pray that the g-tube site would heal up and not erode with the vincristine and steroids this time and that the chemo would do it's job without any side damage. Other things to pray for: that he would continue to eat more and more food to meet his calorie and nutrition needs and that he would like good food.

Thank you for praying for our family and James! It means so much to us!

Blessings, Hannah

(with a little editing from Momma.)