We've been home since September 7, 1999. By home, I mean that we haven't had to live at the hospital. Every Tuesday Luke has a clinic appointment to get a chemo treatment and a check-up. Clinic appointments roughly take about 6 hours.

On Friday Sept. 10, we had to go in and get blood work done.

On Tuesday Sept. 14, we had his clinic appointment but because of the drug that was going to be given (Doxorubicin), we had to get an echocardiograph done and that took some time. His blood work from the 14th came back great so I didn't worry about him being around his older half brothers for the weekend.

Tuesday Sept. 21, had a clinic appointment for Vincristine. Met with Dr. Webber, the surgeon, and he said that he'd like to do surgery either the 6th or 13th of October.

Friday, went in for bloodwork.

Had to be at the hospital for 8:30 am on Monday, Sept. 27. Luke was scheduled to have a CT scan at 9:45 am. They accessed his VAD and this time, instead of having an ng tube inserted, we used a syringe to squirt the contrast liquid into him (he won't take a bottle and wouldn't be able to drink that much liquid from a cup on his own). It took us about half an hour to get it in him, syringe after syringe, but overall, he was more content and not as stressed as he would have been having 4 hospital staff restrain him and shove a tube up his nose and down his throat. He was put under and the scan took about 20 minutes. Won't get results for several days.

Sept. 28, another clinic appointment for Vincristine.

Oct. 5, Vincristine. Luke was scheduled to also get Dactinomycin this week but we talked to Dr. Schulz and agreed that if his surgery was going to be on the 6th [the next day] then he would get nothing, if his surgery would be on the 13th, then the week before he would only have Vincristine and not the Dactinomycin so that he wouldn't be trying to recover and heal with low platelets.

Oct. 12, he didn't have anything except bloodwork as he was scheduled to have surgery on the 13th. We spent several hours inthe hospital anyway on the Tuesday as we had to go to the pre-admission clinic where we were asked a million questions and Luke was examined again. We were able to go home after that and get ready for the next day.