Things are looking up

So it's been a rough few weeks. We were in Sick Kids ER with fevers three times over the holidays. Daniel has been sick with one thing after another (mycoplasma pneumonia, Influenza B, viral throat infection). The silver lining is that none of these is terribly serious. He just felt like "crud on a stick", to use his words. But he is much better now, and appears to be well on the mend.
He got his monthly chemo last Wednesday, and his counts were all low, but he has been fighting hard for weeks, and his bone marrow is kind of pooped, so hopefully with some rest and a better appetite, those numbers will go back up a bit next week.
Today our Make A Wish reps are coming by to go over some more info on Daniel's wish, which is a trip to DisneyWorld. Daniel wants to meet the Power Rangers. Considering his other possible wishes were meeting the Yeti, and partying with Darth Vader aboard the Death Star, this could be an interesting trip.
In other (very positive) news, I was reading a study completed recently at a major oncology centre in the US, which followed hundreds of kids with ALL. It looked at their bloodwork results throughout treatment, and their ultimate survival rates, and looked for correlations. And they found one very significant result. Looking at the lymphocyte count on day 15 of treatment (way back in the very beginning), kids with a count of 350 or less had an overall survival rate of 43%. But kids with a count of 350 or more had a survival rate of 87%!! That makes the Day 15 lymphocyte count a strong prognostic indicator of survival. Needless to say, I went running for Daniel's binder of bloodwork results, and went straight to Day 15. Are you ready for it? Daniel's count was 2,090. Yes, that's correct. Lymphocytes are a kind of fighter cell, they fight what is ailing you. So basically, my boy is an ass-kicking machine with a great outlook for the future. And a Boston accent, but that's another story. :)