Opening Day

Last weekend was a very crowded one at the house. Leo was here, as he usually is, as was my Dad, up from Florida for Yankees Opening Day. We had a good time - Leo has met my dad a few times, and we went for a little drive up to Bear Mountain and did a tiny bit of hiking before the rain hit.

The boys.

But I noticed some swelling in Leo's neck.

Leo was a bit low-key this weekend, which was welcomed, given the schedule and such. He went with me to pick up my dad at JFK, which makes the drive out there a lot more pleasant. (It's also more pleasant on the weekend, when the regular traffic jam doesn't start until you're on the Van Wyck). 

Every time I pick up Leo, I check. How are the lymph nodes? Well, by Saturday I had a feeling that his neck was problematic. It was small - nothing you'd notice from the outside, but I could feel the individual nodes. That's not good. By Monday morning, his neck was a bit swollen - not in the "just swallowed a tennis ball" swollen, but still noticeably thick and swollen. He had a coughing fit Sunday night that sounded like his throat was bothering him. His popliteal nodes were enlarged, too.

His neck continued to swell on Tuesday. We had an appointment set up for Thursday morning, but after a difficult day and night on Tuesday where he seemed really uncomfortable, we moved the appointment up to Wednesday.

We got the bad news Wednesday afternoon that it was aggressively back, with all of his nodes enlarged. We had him treated with L-spar and will keep an eye on him all weekend. I'm expecting, at some point, that he's going to feel really bad and probably be a little ill, either from the Chemo or from tumor lysis. The big thing is if we can avoid prednisone - it makes him ill, crazed, uncomfortable, pant, and generally feel bad, or so it seems. He just doesn't do well on it - even though technically it's "well tolerated". The plan is to start him on a lowered dose even if he needs it.

And now it's about the plan going forward. We'll see how he does this weekend, and see how he does with the L-spar and with/without prednisone. I'm afraid this was a preview of things to come.