Today was a pivotal day in Naaman’s journey. In the afternoon on Thursday Naaman underwent a series of procedures while under anesthesia.
- The first was surgery adding a port. The port essentially taps directly into an artery and is a circular shape directly under the skin near the clavicle. It doesn’t cause him any pain and provides the staff direct access to take blood samples (which there are many) and to use for chemotherapy. It is great too because you can take baths like normal and wash over it without disturbing like an IV would be in the periphery like arms and legs. An extra bonus is that at night they can tap into it much easier disturbing his sleep a bit less.
- The second was a spinal tap. This was to test the fluid in his spine for the existence of Leukemia cells.
- The third was a bone marrow biopsy. This was to determine the exact type of Leukemia and to confirm the type they believe it is.
Naaman successfully had the procedures and recovered well Thursday evening around 5pm (although was very groggy the whole night).
On Thursday night Naaman began his first round of chemotherapy. For those that don’t know the chemotherapy is essentially a series of drugs given intravenously that together correct the specific type of cancer by killing off the bad cells. They are also given with other drugs that help against things like nausea. We will go into more specifics later but that are the basics. Definitely a good start and we are proud of our little guy.