September 27 - Seth's DLI

Seth's counts had been dropping. We were so concerned with Joel that we tried not to focus on it. But at some point he had another biopsy and Dr. Krance decided to give him some donor lymphocytes. All of this happened on September 27, the day before their birthday.

I was at home that day. I brought Mom up to the hospital with us. My Dad stayed at the house to get Nathaniel off of the bus, because as usual it was an all-day event for us. Thankfully Seth and I checked in at clinic, and then went to Joel's room to hang out and eat lunch because the cells wouldn't be ready until later that afternoon. As with any kind of donor cells, there was monitoring afterwards for quite some time. Seth fell asleep in the car on the way home. That night we had planned to make strawberry cupcakes. I remember driving home in the 5:00 traffic (a little earlier really) and then having to stop at Food Town to get cupcake papers to put on the cupcakes, so it was hygenic and we could share with our friends at the hospital. When we get home we tried on the birthday shirts that Aunt Hill had sent for Seth and Joel and made the cupcakes to take up to the hospital the next day.

At first nothing happened with the DLI. Finally in December we saw an increase in Seth's counts.