Most of you probably remember my old posts about Colby, a friend of my granddaughter's who was diagnosed with lymphoma about this time last summer. It has been awhile since I have posted anything concerning Colby on here, so for those of you who remember him, I thought I would give an update. Colby is now 7 yrs old and he has spent the past year getting chemo treatments. He spent about the first 4 months after the diagnosis at St Jude's in Memphis without getting to come home at all. Right now, he is able to get part of his treatments at a hospital in Springfield, MO, which is less than an hour from his home. He is doing fairly good now and is continuing to make a trip to St Jude's about once a month. That is about a 6 hr drive for them.
New members, FYI, a lot of the horse.com members sent cards and gifts to Colby while he was staying at St Jude's. He got a lot of cool stuff and him and his family really appreciated everyone's kindness and generosity. Unfortunately, their house caught fire since then, so a lot of the gifts were destroyed in the fire. Colby and Leslie were at St Jude's when this happened and Jake was at work, so everyone was safe. They had to completely gut the house and basically build the whole inside from scratch. Especially because of the compromise with Colby's immune system, they had to replace everything in the house. The fire caused water lines to melt and burst, so they couldn't take a chance with any exposure to mold, etc. The good news is that, after fighting with the insurance company and several months of rebuilding, they have recently got to move back into their house.
From time to time, his mom, Leslie, posts info about him on a website called CaringBridge. Here are a couple of the last posts from that site:
Tuesday, June 2, 2009 9:35 AM, CDT
So yesterday Colby had his check-ups in Springfield at St. John's as usual. His counts are hanging high at 1900, so we couldn't ask for better right now. Then he had to get his monthly pentamidine. It's an hour infusion medicine, he gets it instead of septra. And whenever we arrived there, Ms. Suzy, his St. John's nurse had him toasted ravioli's ready for lunch. One time when we were there she ordered him some and they never came. So this time she made sure he had his lunch. It was so sweet and thoughtful. He had really enjoyed them...so Thank You Ms. Suzy.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009 8:55 AM, CDT
Well Colby had his normal visit yesterday at St. John's. We didn't get to see his Doctor as he is on vacation, but Ms. Amanda his nurse was there. Colby's ANC is at 800 so it's dropped again, but hopefully will pick back up by next week. I don't know what were going to do with him!?! Everything else looks good though, hgb 11.7 and platelets are 223. So we couldn't ask for better numbers there.