Tomorrow's chemo cancelled

This is probably a pretty boring post, but so be it.  We aren't going to PCMC tomorrow cause Ty's ANC is 500 boooo that's right on the border for neutropenic.  ANC is a calculation of white germ fighting cells and determines the best guess for how well your body can fight off infection.  Ty is feeling pretty good, and not fevering or anything and we have been so lucky so far cause the kids haven't brought home any sicknesses.  His ANC has been hovering in the 700 range (not stellar, 1500 is the bottom of normal, but good enough).  We decided to take advantage of that and had a combo birthday party on the 8th for Merin, Tyson, and Ryan who all have birthdays in December (I know what were we thinking!)  But we weren't sure what his ANC would be when his real birthday rolled around closer to Christmas.  It was lots of fun, I set up a card table for each kid with their own decorations.  Ty chose Buzz and Woody stuff and I did yellow and pink for Merin and Star Wars stuff for Ryan.  I have been pretty relaxed about stuff the last couple of weeks cause it has been such a relief to be above 500.  We have even ventured to the store, and went to a party at Randy's tumbling for about 1/2 hour.  Still with a mask on and lots of sanitizer, but it's been nice to not have to worry about every little germ, that my friends is exhausting!
We had some family over for the first time in months, but we still missed several of them due to illnesses...and so it was a small party but that's life right now...if you are sick or have been around someone ill you shouldn't be around someone with a low immune system, which seems like an easy concept but it is really a challenge because there are so many things that go around that are minor to normal healthy people but can really wreak havoc on a chemo kid, in fact we know of a little girl who is in intensive care on a respirator because she got a flulike virus and we are praying she can make it through but she is not doing well, if she lives she will probably be on oxygen the rest of her life because of the damage... because of the flu!  I know I go on and on about this topic but it seems scary when you are in the middle of it.  It just seems like a cruel irony that the 'medicine' used to treat cancer can lead to the death of the person it is treating!
Okay, enough of my ranting, I'll load some pictures on here of the birthday party and stuff.  It's been pretty low key around here only going to treatments every 10 days, it seems like forever before we head back to PCMC with such a big break!  And now we have an even bigger one!  Ty will probably retest blood on Monday for a possible Tuesday trip.  We'll see what the doc says tomorrow.

Reading stories tonight...see how his port site is kind of red?  He was accessed for his CBC right before this.  WBC 2.5, HCT 29.5, PLTS 313, ANC 475 which they round up to 500.  We are kind of stunned cause until about 9:00 tonight we were planning on going tomorrow, now we don't know what to do with ourselves

hand in mouth (cringe)  but see the hair?  He is already growing hair back cause the chemo he is on right now doesn't cause drastic hair loss like the ones he was on in September/Oct.  He's probably all done being bald. Sigh, I'm gonna miss that soft bald head. : )