Ryan's story

Ryan was diagnosed with Stage 4 High Risk Neuroblastoma N-MYC amplified in July 2008. He was out of treatment for just over a year when in November 2010 our lives were again turned upside down when we discovered the disease had returned in his bones and bone marrow. After a year of treatment re-staging scans in November 2011 showed that he had again achieved remission.

However just 3 months later, in February 2012, end of treatment scans gave us the devastating news that the disease has returned, this time with a tumour near his spine. In March Ryan started 4 weeks of radiotherapy followed by chemotherapy. Re-staging scans in May and August showed no evidence of disease. On the 4th September 2012 Ryan received treatment in Tubingen for a haplo-identical stem cell transplant. He is a happy, active boy who is now enjoying life to the full.

Saturday 15 September 2012

Day -3

Well after the update yesterday Ryan was sick, he felt better after and had a reasonable night but this morning he had Melphalan and as expected he has been sick quite a lot.  The nurses have added a couple additional anti-sickness drugs to try and control the sickness and at present he is sleeping.  Considering where we are in the conditioning phase of the treatment we can only be thankful that Ryan has not felt like this earlier.  Until now he has been eating and drinking normally and been happy and active.  Today though he hasnt been able to keep anything down.

He did manage to speak to his cousins on facetime earlier and has been on the x-box but I think that now there will be a change in his condition until the new stem cells have grafted.

On a positive note my blood was tested this morning to see how I am responding to the GCSF injections and I was told that the results were perfect.  I have 42 white blood cells and 38 neutrophils - both many many times the normal upper limits and a good indication that the harvest will be successful.

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